Mapping the Rise of The Railways

The Campaign for Better Transport has released an interactive map which shows the huge increase in rail traffic in Great Britain over the last 18 years.

The Rail Travel Station Usage 1997-2015 map visualizes annual rail passenger traffic for each year since 1997. In those 18 years rail traffic in Great Britain has increased by 1.45 billion annual passenger journeys. The Rail Travel Station Usage map shows which stations have seen the biggest increase in traffic and which stations have seen a drop in traffic since 1997.

The map uses the CartoDB Torque library to animate through all 18 years of passenger traffic. The circular station map markers are sized to represent the size of the station (amount of passenger traffic). The color of the circles indicates the scale of the increase (or decrease) in passenger traffic over the last 18 years.