station-walking-distance

Finding walking distances/times between train stations

Requirements

• Python 3.10.5
• keys.txt should contain the MBTA v3 API key on line 1, and the Google Maps API key on line 2.

Files in order of execution

more-station-info.py

Converts stations.json with format:

    {
        "Line": [
            {
                "id": "place-1234",
                "name": "Example Place"
            },
            ...
        ],
        ...
    }

into stations-info.json with format:

    {
        "place-1234": {
            "id": "place-1234",
            "name": "Example Place"
        },
        ...
    }

mbta-data.py

Converts stations-info.json into stations-full.json. It uses the MBTA v3 API to get the address, geographic coordinates, and wheelchair accessibility of each station.

{
    "place-1234": {
        "id": "place-1234",
        "name": "Example Place",
        "wheelchair_boarding": 1,
        "address": "100 Example Rd, Boston, MA, 02121",
        "lat": 12.345678,
        "long": -87.654321
    },
    ...
}

distance-calc.py

Uses GeoPy to find all pairs of stations that are less than one mile apart as the crow flies. This uses coordinates and a rough calculation, but it narrows down the options by a lot so that minimal requests have to be made to the Google Maps API. It outputs allPairs.json with the format:

[
    [
        "place-1234",
        "place-exmpl"
    ],
    ...
]

gmaps-data.py

Requests the walking distances and times between all pairs of stations from allPairs.json, and saves them to final-dist-and-time.json. The keys in the output file are named as "place-exmpl_place-1234", with the two stations ordered by Python's .sort(). The format is as follows:

{
    "place-exmpl_place-1234": {
        "place1": "place-1234",
        "place2": "place-exmpl",
        "wheelchair_boarding_1": 1,
        "wheelchair_boarding_2": 0,
        "distance": "0.8 mi",
        "duration": "17 mins"
    },
    ...
}