Cable car in Barcelona

Barcelona (Part — III)

Exploring the city

In this blog I am going to explore upon the Barcelona datasets on transportation.

In a city like Barcelona, transportation becomes very crucial and it serves as lifeline for many people.

In my previous two blogs (part-I and part-II) I have explored a lot with some visualisations covering the population, births,death,accidents, immigration and emigration. The dataset is available on kaggle

Transportation in Barcelona

In this section I will be analysing on two datasets i.e. the bus stops and transportation.

The bus stop gives a complete picture about Barcelona’s bus service and transportation covers entire transportation services in Barcelona.

Bus stops

This table gives an overall picture of Barcelona’s bus stops and stations

From this table we can see that

• There are 3 different kinds of bus stops and bus stations (where buses are kept or, a bus terminal).
• There are total 3146 bus stops + stations.
• There are total 3 bus stations.
• There is a separate bus service connecting airport.
• Most no.of day bus stops are in Sants-Montjuic district
• Most no.of night bus stops and airport bus stops are there in Eixample
• Eixample has the day to night bus stops ratio least indicating that the no.of bus stops are even during day and night. Whereas in Sants-Montjuic this ratio is highest indicating the no.of night bus stops are very less as compared to no.of day bus stops.
• The no.of Airport bus stops in Eixample is the most, indicating that most of the people from Eixample are accessing the airport bus services or, since this is the city centre so it is most likely that people who are coming from outside will visit Eixample.
• Here a table is used to show this information as table makes the picture more precise and one can go through the data very easily as the no.of entries and the numbers themselves are not large.

Now let’s see the above information visually also

Eixample is leading the chart with most no.of night bus stops. One inference we can make is that as the city centre and most of workplaces are located here. So people may need the services late night in this district.

Since the dataset contains latitude and longitude for each bus stop we can actually perceive the data geographically and make certain inferences out of it.

This map is showing that the day bus stops are spread across the city and not only the main streets but also small streets are having the day bus stops.

The night bus stops are less in number and as the map shows, only main streets and very few small streets are having night bus stops.

This map shows the three bus stations located in three different parts of the city with significant amount of distance between them, covering the entire city. From the table we have seen that there are only three bus stations one in Eixample(centre), one in Sants-Montjuic (left) and one in Sant-Andreau(top-right).

The airport bus stops are located in the Eixample district which is the centre of the city. The black circle above shows the bus stops, the big circle with blue border shows the Airport and the orange line indicates the route to airport.

Note: All this maps are generated by using a python library geoplotlib (giving input as the latitudes and longitudes and internet connection for loading maps) and the shapes and circles are manually made by using libre office software.

Now this is all that I have done to explore the bus services in Barcelona. Let’s see the overall transportation in Barcelona.

As an introduction to various types of transportation available (as per the dataset)

Underground represents the metro railway services and the labels (shown beside) indicates the route.

There are total 19 routes as per the data and they are labelled as shown beside in above figure.

Railway FCG (Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya) is a railway company which operates several unconnected lines in Catalonia, Spain.

RENFE (Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles) is a Spanish national railway infrastructure company. This company operates both normal and high speed trains for both short and long distance. This network runs across the Spanish territory.

RENFE

Funicular is a small carriage which moves in a slope i.e. goes up and down a hill.

Funicular

(Source: Wikipedia)

This table gives information in a summarised form:

• Eixample being the centre of the city has the most variety of modes of transportation and it also has the most no.of underground railway stations. It is also well connected with FCG and RENFE.
• The maritime stations are only in those districts which are on the coast. So Ciutat Vella and Sants-Montjuic has the maritime stations.
• Sarria-Sant-Gervasi is the district which consists of many hills so accordingly we can see that there are 4 funicular stations. And also it is well connected by trams and underground railway.

Since this data also consists of latitude and longitude so we can plot them over a map and visualise the map.

Now let’s see some of the map visualisations which will be more insightful.

This is a map representing the top 5 metro routes (ordered as per no.of stations in that route). The map and table along with the manually created route lines shows clearly the inter connectivity of underground railway in the Barcelona city. It is also showing the huge network that is there in the circled portion displaying the connectivity in the city centre. (Looks quite messy!).

This map shows the tram stations which are clustered showing that this service is not there everywhere in the city but only in certain parts.

The maritime stations are located in the coastal districts and it is clear from the map where the stations are actually located (Easily can be identified).

This is the Airport railway service which is another mode of transport connecting the airport with the city. As we can see from the map unlike bus services, the railway service to airport is much broader and covering a large portion of city crossing through various districts. The red line indicating the route.

So in conclusion to this section one can easily say that Barcelona is very well connected city with a variety of modes of transportation be it cable cars, funicular, high speed trains or bus, every mode of transport is like lifeline of the people of Barcelona.

Buses and underground railway are the two most important mode of transport within the city and RENFE,FCG are the most important mode of transport across cities.

So this is all for transportation. And with this we have gained a lot of knowledge about the various transportation modes and also explored a lot and gained a lot of insights.

I have never been to Barcelona but with this exploratory analysis, I personally have learnt a lot about the city.