Houston BCycle Stations

Technology Used: ESRI ArcGIS for JavaScript API version 4.12, jQuery, jQuery UI

About: Recently, there has been a need within H-GAC to locate the BCycle stations in Houston. BCycle provides two feeds that contains information about each station. One feed contains some information that includes name of the station, address, latitude/longitude. The other feed contains information about how many bicycles are available and how many docks are available to return bicycles. The two feeds are json files which is a file type that can't easily be mapped.

Process: The first thing I needed to decide was how to display the json feeds. I decided to use ESRI's ArcGIS for JavaScript API. The API allows me to create a graphic of each station using the station's latitude/longitude. The graphic is useful, but it didn't have information that a user would really want besides the location. In order to make the graphic more useful to the user, I decided to join the second json feed so that the station will have the information about how many bikes and docks are available. I added search capabilities to the application. After the user searches an address, the application will zoom and highlight the closest BCycle station to the searched location. The search widget is also limited to the Houston area since the application only contains the BCycle stations in the Houston area. Users can also turn on a layer to show which roads have an existing bike lane, shared use path/trail, signed shared roadway, or signed shoulder bike route.