In the summer of 2016 the City of Vancouver is planning to implement a public bike share (PBS) system. Projects like these already exist in Toronto, Montreal, and many other cities across North America and Europe. It is a service where people can rent a bike for however long they need it and pay based on use, not dissimilar to Car2Go. The plan is to have 150 stations across the metro Vancouver area with a focus on the downtown area. Our team planned to find the best locations to site the 50 stations incipient throughout the city.
Our team consisted of 4 members all with individual and group tasks. One member was responsible for creating a flow chart of all the actions completed throughout the project, 2 members member was responsible for gathering data and information about the technical aspects of the city’s project, and I was responsible for the majority of the GIS analysis. We all worked together to compile the proposal and final report.
This was my first big GIS project where I had to plan, find the data, conduct analysis, and disseminate the findings. It proved a valuable learning experience for me and was the most beneficial part of the course for me. Some lessons learned were:
- When working as a team it is beneficial to denote everyone’s task. This makes for a more efficient use of resources and time. It is not necessary to make a group decision about every little thing, tasks should be delegated and entrusted with the respective member.
- GIS analysis on a project works best if only one person is working at a time. This ensures that nothing is missed and datasets are not altered before they should be.
- It was surprising that all the data that we required for this project was available in the public domain. From either DataBC, the City of Vancouver, or the University of Toronto.
- Always keep track of your data and use intuitive naming so as not to cause unnecessary confusion during the analysis.
I have attached our report that contains our analysis, findings, and recommendations for those interested.