From time to time I get requests to explain how the service analysis charts work in more detail, but without getting into the gory bits of how the data are actually manipulated.

To that end, I have added a new article Understanding TTC Service Analysis Charts: A Primer that goes into a fair amount of detail but leaves out much of the technical nuts of bolts. It includes examples to show the progress from mounds of detailed data to summary formats, and shows the challenges of what to display and how depending on what aspect of service one wishes to examine.

The intent is to have an “explainer” with the details to avoid duplicating this information in every service analysis article.

The article is long, but is divided into section with hotlinks from an index near the beginning so that readers can jump to each section directly.

If you have comments or questions, please leave them on that article, not here. (Comments here are disabled.)

This is a complement to the technical article Methodology For Analysis of TTC’s Vehicle Tracking Data that looks “under the covers”.

Both of these articles are linked from the “Reference Material” tab in the main navigation bar if you need them in the future.