This Interactive View Of NYC Taxi Rides Is The Ultimate Map Porn

On the list of things you didn't know you wanted in your life, we'd bet an interactive map of 170 million New York taxi trips has to be number one. But that's exactly what we've found, and it's bizarrely fascinating.

The map was put together by a team at MIT SENSEable City Laboratory, with the intention of showing how fare sharing could not only save you cash, but also contribute to a more environmentally friendly transport system. It aims to encourage fare sharing by allowing you to place your beginning and end points, visualising just how many people made almost identical trips each way. You then get a breakdown of how much passengers could've saved in fares, how many fewer miles could've been driven and emissions savings (in kg of CO2) if passengers had shared trips.

You can also see an overview of New York, splitting fares into certain times of day. Residential and business districts become apparent in places where pickups are prevalent in the morning, replaced by more dropoffs in the evenings. Nightlife is also evident in Lower Manhatten as pickups dominate in the early hours.

If you like maps, are a fan of beautifully displayed data or just fancy saving money on your taxi rides, then this map is for you.