Photo by DDOTDC on Flickr.

Reader Corey H has already taken the Capital Bikeshare anonymous trip data, released just a few days ago, and crunched the numbers to come up with some fascinating nuggets of information:

1) Downhill flow. Average trip is -1.94 meters, or over 2,632 kilometers in elevation change total. The average ride from Wisconsin and Macomb loses 55 meters in elevation. Fairfax Village has the highest start station:end station ratio (71 trips started, only 29 ended). 2) Last mile usage. The four most common one-way trips are Adams Mill/Columbia to Calvert/Woodley and back as well as Eastern Market Metro to Lincoln Park and back. 3) Tourists like to use it to sight-see. The 6th most common one-way trip is from the Smithsonian station back to the Smithsonian Station at 3,586 trips.
The average [such] trip is 2 hours, 48 minutes. 76.1% of [these] trips generate usage fees. Breaking that down between casual and members, 86.0% of casual incurred fees on these rides while 18.8% of members incurred fees. 4) Casual vs. members usage fees. 40.7% of casual rides incur fees. 3.3% 3.3% of member rides incur fees. *Using GPS elevation data so all caveats apply. And it only factors in station-to-station elevation change.
Corey added in an email, “I’ve already taken the time to clean the data and get it into a usable database. So if there are specific questions you’d like to be answered I can easily put together a query to get those answers (and I’m sure the others can as well).” What would you like to know about Capital Bikeshare usage? He can’t necessarily investigate everyone’s questions, but if anyone posts some interesting questions that catch Corey’s eye, maybe he will analyze them for us.