Dashboard Proposal for New York Metro

Introduction

The following is an assignment to build a dashboard to propose an increase in the fare price for the New York City Subway in 2019 (assuming the current year is 2018) as well as to suggest which 3 subway routes should be designated as the first to take on this fare price increase.

Project

You can also view the dashboard directly on Tableau Public: New York City Metro Dashboard

My approach was to lean on stability. The reasoning behind this is because whenever companies introduce price increases, there is always a bit of backlash from customers, whether that may be using the service less or outright switching to an alternative service. With that in mind, I chose to focus the routes with the largest amount of commuters, as according to a study done by APTA in 2017, 49% of metro travellers are commuters. With that in mind, I sought to look for the routes which had the most ridership on weekdays historically throughout the years of 2013 to 2018, which would indicate the routes with the most commuters.

In terms of the actual price increase, I made the recommendation for bumping the price to $2.80 (up 1.82%) because it was in line with the US inflation rates. While it is higher than the 5-year inflation rate of 1.51%, the fare prices haven't changed since 2015, so this price increase in 2019 of 1.82% would be within reasonable consumer expectations. Furthermore, it would still leave New York fares at a reasonable price when compared to other global cities, despite NYC having one of the largest subway systems in the world. Also important to note that $2.80 is also coin-friendly.

Data

Data was from the following sources: