PSRC’s data team is starting the year off with a win! The Data Science Team placed first in a national hackathon competition for the new Census Transportation Planning Products (CTPP) data application programming interface (API).
Chris Peak, Michael Jensen and Suzanne Childress submitted a web-based application called CTPP explorer, which maps the CTPP commute mode data for the Puget Sound Region. What separated them from the competition and impressed the judges was their development of an R package, which makes it simple to pull data from the new API.
“Since we wrote a package to get all types of CTPP data, we noticed when the API didn’t return some categories of tables and only partial data in another case. By providing those details to the developer, we absolutely did help improve the API before its official release”, said Jensen, Senior Data Programmer and Analyst.
The app provides information on the Regional Growth Center single occupancy vehicle (SOV) at work or home.
Check out the web app made for the hackathon here: https://psrcwa.shinyapps.io/ctpp-explorer/
Special recognition goes to Chris Peak and Mike Jensen as they pushed beyond their comfort zone to learn new technologies. It was Peak’s first expedition into building the web app they created.
The data team hopes to build upon the app for the Centers Monitoring work coming up.
For more information about the hackathon: CTPP Hackathon (manhan.co)
