Rideshare trips have been a hot topic of discussion in Chicago recently. There is debate about whether the availability of rideshare companies do anything to help or actually hurt congestion, how rideshare companies compete with public transportation, and the extent to which the negative externalities of rideshare are understood (e.g. obstructing bike lanes). This year, Lori Lightfoot (Chicago’s Mayor) introduced a new tiered taxing structure for rideshare trips that includes top-tier fees that are the highest in the nation.

I’ve been using the Google Fit app to keep track of my fitness activity ever since I purchased my latest cell phone, around the end of 2017. I’ve found the app relatively easy to use; it provides plenty of options for a variety of different types of workouts, which is a bonus for me. One thing I find lacking, however, is the ability to analyze/visualize fitness data within the app.

In this post, we’ll explore the Red Light Camera Violations dataset accessed through the Chicago Data Portal, provided by the City of Chicago. This is just one of numerous datasets available through the portal; topics range from building permits to divvy bikes to crime data, weather data, and many more. We can use the Socrata Open Data API to pull down and analyze the dataset.1 Lucky for us, developers at the City of Chicago have written an R package called RSocrata that allows for easy interaction with Socrata datasets in a few simple functions.