maelstrompli / uber-tlc-foil-response

Uber trip data from a freedom of information request to NYC's Taxi & Limousine Commission

Uber TLC FOIL Response

This directory contains data on over 4.5 million Uber pickups in New York City from April to September 2014, and 14.3 million more Uber pickups from January to June 2015. Trip-level data on 10 other for-hire vehicle (FHV) companies, as well as aggregated data for 329 FHV companies, is also included. All the files are as they were received on August 3, Sept. 15 and Sept. 22, 2015.

FiveThirtyEight obtained the data from the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) by submitting a Freedom of Information Law request on July 20, 2015. The TLC has sent us the data in batches as it continues to review trip data Uber and other HFV companies have submitted to it. The TLC's correspondence with FiveThirtyEight is included in the files TLC_letter.pdf, TLC_letter2.pdf and TLC_letter3.pdf. TLC records requests can be made here.

This data was used for four FiveThirtyEight stories: Uber Is Serving New York’s Outer Boroughs More Than Taxis Are, Public Transit Should Be Uber’s New Best Friend, Uber Is Taking Millions Of Manhattan Rides Away From Taxis, and Is Uber Making NYC Rush-Hour Traffic Worse?.

In the folder uber-trip-data, there are six files of raw data on Uber pickups in New York City from April to September 2014. The files are separated by month and each has the following columns:

Header	Definition
Date/Time	The date and time of the Uber pickup
Lat	The latitude of the Uber pickup
Lon	The longitude of the Uber pickup
Base	The TLC base company code affiliated with the Uber pickup

Also in the folder is the file uber-raw-data-janjune-15.csv.zip The unzipped file has the following columns:

Header	Definition
Dispatching_base_num	The TLC base company code of the base that dispatched the Uber
Pickup_date	The date and time of the Uber pickup
Affiliated_base_num	The TLC base company code affiliated with the Uber pickup
locationID	The pickup location ID affiliated with the Uber pickup

The Base codes are for the following Uber bases:

Base Code	Base Name
B02512	Unter
B02598	Hinter
B02617	Weiter
B02682	Schmecken
B02764	Danach-NY
B02765	Grun
B02835	Dreist
B02836	Drinnen

The file taxi-zone-lookup.csv shows the taxi Zone and Borough for each locationID

In the folder other-FHV-data, there are 10 files of raw data on pickups from 10 for-hire vehicle (FHV) companies. The trip information varies by company, but can include day of trip, time of trip, pickup location, driver's for-hire license number, and vehicle's for-hire license number.

There is also a file other-FHV-data-jan-aug-2015.csv containing daily pickup data for 329 FHV companies from January 2015 through August 2015.

The file Aggregate_FHV_Data.xlsx, which contains aggregate analysis on taxi and FHV trips, came directly from the TLC.

The file Uber-Jan-Feb-FOIL.csv contains aggregated daily Uber trip statistics in January and February 2015.