03 / Data visualization · Metro Vancouver

Rhythm of Transit

Play the city. An interactive turntable transforms Metro Vancouver’s scheduled transit starts into colour, motion and a gentle musical composition.

View project

Open the player in a new tab. Sound starts when you press Listen.

60-second summary

Problem

A transit timetable is rich with patterns, but rows of departure times make the rhythm of a city difficult to feel.

Role

Interaction design · Data visualization · Sound design · Responsive web

Pivotal decision

Preserve the exact spacing of scheduled starts, then offer a shared visual clock and an optional musical interpretation of four selected routes.

Published experience

A responsive player with daily schedule updates, five time windows, curated mixes, custom route colours, solo playback and two sound choices.

Rhythm of Transit showing route presets and four colourful schedule rings beside the clock and player controls — 01Play the city
The default City mix brings together R4, 99, SeaBus and Canada Line. Every dot represents a scheduled trip start.

Decisions and system thinking

Make the schedule feel musical, without changing the data

The visual and musical layers share one timeline, while the choices keep the experience personal and easy to explore.

01 / Time as a circle

Give the day a familiar shape.

Four route rings turn around a shared clock. Morning, midday, evening and night offer focused windows; Full day reveals the service day, including quiet gaps and after-midnight starts.

02 / A gentle composition

Let the schedule set the rhythm.

Each scheduled start triggers a soft mallet note. Melodic uses a D minor pentatonic phrase with quieter supporting voices; Original uses four steady pitches. Timing stays unchanged in both.

03 / Personal exploration

Keep curiosity within reach.

Choose a preset, substitute a route, solo one voice or change its colour. Playback sits inside the clock, with a seek bar and volume controls nearby. Rounded typography and restrained motion keep the experience calm.

02At 45% through the morning, filled notes show past starts and outlined notes show what is still to come. Playback stays within reach at the centre of the clock.

Listening workflow

Find a rhythm of your own

01Choose a service date and time window
02Start with a curated mix or select four routes
03Press Listen to begin; pause or seek at any time
04Solo a route to hear its contribution
05Compare the full day, another date or a different mix

Source and interpretation

Scheduled starts, with a creative musical layer

The source is TransLink’s official GTFS schedule, refreshed daily. Marks represent scheduled trip starts in a feed direction, sometimes from multiple origins. They are not live arrivals, measured waits or reliability scores. Four schedule hours become 24 playback seconds, preserving relative spacing. Melodies are authored interpretations rather than additional transit measurements. Extended service hours stay attached to their original service date.

Design contribution

What I contributed across the product workflow

Circular schedule visualization and route comparison
Calm animation and playback interaction
Pentatonic melodic phrases and soft synthesized voices
Curated route presets and custom colour controls
Responsive layout and keyboard-accessible dialogs
Daily schedule refresh and clear source attribution

TransLink GTFS schedule and attribution terms