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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyThe life and times of Citi Bike #32606
Aaron Gordon, who is a data reporter at Bloomberg News, has been working on his coding skills. And so for absolutely no reason whatsoever, he decided to map out the life of one of New York's Citi Bikes, specifically Citi Bike #32606. The dataset is pre-pandemic because Citi Bike stopped publishing unique bike identifiers for each trip around 2020. But based on historical data and far as we know, #32606 is the most-used traditional bike (i.e. not an e-bike) in the history of the Citi Bike network.
It began its life on October 15, 2017 at 11:08am in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and then went on to accomplish 7,060 miles (~11,361 kilometers) and 8,624 trips over a period of 806 days. This works out to an average of just over 10 trips per day. In total, this bike traveled the equivalent of a return trip from New York to Los Angeles, and then a short trip up to Burlington, Vermont. And it was all done with only leg power.
Here's the visual mapping that Aaron created:
What I love about this passion project is that it starts to show just how impactful something as simple as a single shared bicycle can be for a city. These bike networks are relatively new, but they're already doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to urban mobility. Earlier this week, we learned that in the City of London, cyclists now make up 2x the number of people in cars. And that of the people cycling, 17% of them do so using a shared bicycle.
In the case of New York, the Citi Bike network had ~128,000 active members and ~34,000 bikes as of February 2025. What you're seeing above is the story of just one them.
Cover photo by Spenser Sembrat on Unsplash
Aaron Gordon, who is a data reporter at Bloomberg News, has been working on his coding skills. And so for absolutely no reason whatsoever, he decided to map out the life of one of New York's Citi Bikes, specifically Citi Bike #32606. The dataset is pre-pandemic because Citi Bike stopped publishing unique bike identifiers for each trip around 2020. But based on historical data and far as we know, #32606 is the most-used traditional bike (i.e. not an e-bike) in the history of the Citi Bike network.
It began its life on October 15, 2017 at 11:08am in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and then went on to accomplish 7,060 miles (~11,361 kilometers) and 8,624 trips over a period of 806 days. This works out to an average of just over 10 trips per day. In total, this bike traveled the equivalent of a return trip from New York to Los Angeles, and then a short trip up to Burlington, Vermont. And it was all done with only leg power.
Here's the visual mapping that Aaron created:
What I love about this passion project is that it starts to show just how impactful something as simple as a single shared bicycle can be for a city. These bike networks are relatively new, but they're already doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to urban mobility. Earlier this week, we learned that in the City of London, cyclists now make up 2x the number of people in cars. And that of the people cycling, 17% of them do so using a shared bicycle.
In the case of New York, the Citi Bike network had ~128,000 active members and ~34,000 bikes as of February 2025. What you're seeing above is the story of just one them.
Cover photo by Spenser Sembrat on Unsplash
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
Support Brandon Donnelly
Brandon DonnellyThe life and times of Citi Bike #32606
Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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The life and times of Citi Bike #32606 https://brandondonnelly.com/the-life-and-times-of-citi-bike-32606