This map shows the 8 million taxi pickups that occurred from January to August 2016

Despite the fact it sometimes seems like everyone takes Uber, D.C. taxicabs actually picked up over eight million passengers between January and August 2016.
This according to data DataLensDC’s Kate Rabinowitz managed to obtain from the Department of For-Hire Vehicles via a FOIA request — though D.C. also recently published it all as open data. Rabinowitz, who won our D.C. Innovation Award for Technologist of the Year, created some visualizations using the data, including a map, and posted it all in a recent article on Greater Greater Washington.
https://twitter.com/DataLensDC/status/811443683476303872
So what can we learn from the map?
“Even without any map references, the outline of DC and the region’s main arteries is apparent, and we see that cabs go where they’re most likely to find people and people go where their most likely to find cabs,” Rabinowitz writes. So for example there are spikes on U Street in the early morning hours of Saturday and Sunday, and downtown within work-week hours.

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