While Hanno Rein is usually analyzing data about stars and other planetary systems at the University of Toronto, in his spare time he decided to take a look at something a little more down to Earth: Bike Share Toronto trips. 

"I'm a cyclist myself and the perfect data set was available, so decided to play around with it," he told blogTO.

I've made an animation of every single @BikeShareTO trip made in 2020. Enjoy! #bikeTO pic.twitter.com/ObJp19cQMz

— Hanno Rein 💫 (@hannorein) February 7, 2021

What he created was a fascinating animation of all the trips people took using Bike Share Toronto last year. 

You can see the little dots zooming across the screen in and out of the downtown core. It's mesmerizing. 

Last year people took almost 3 million bike trips around the city, a figure that Rein wasn't expecting to be so high. 

"I was shocked just by the pure number of trips. It was something I was not fully aware of – the constant stream of people using it – even in the winter," he said. 

And Rein didn't stop at just the number of trips – he ended up digging a bit deeper into the numbers and he found some pretty interesting correlations.

Another one: The majority of #biketo trips are aligned with the road grid. These are also the fastest trips, especially on East/West routes. I suspect this is primarily due to the Adelaide and Richmond bike lanes. pic.twitter.com/zuztveKxpP

— Hanno Rein 💫 (@hannorein) February 8, 2021

For example, as the temperature drops trips get shorter and faster and most of the bike trips follow the road grid. 

This one is fun too: The colder it gets, the shorter and faster the trips. #bikeTO pic.twitter.com/zZaNdwLHxX

— Hanno Rein 💫 (@hannorein) February 8, 2021

He also discovered that the average trip is 1.62 km long and lasts about 14 minutes.

Other people also started seeing patterns in his data. 

I tried to look for a correlation between speed and head/tail wind. But it looks like #biketo is surprisingly resilient to wind (or my data analysis is not good enough). pic.twitter.com/3SZyWjhVuR

— Hanno Rein 💫 (@hannorein) February 8, 2021

"People seem to see all kind of patterns in the animation. They see when the pandemic started, the rise [in users] in the summer, and the expansion of the network east," Rein said. "They're able to recognise patterns some I didn't see myself."

One thing a lot of people noticed were the slow moving dots.

I'm fascinated by the periodic dots that seem to be moving in real time. I'm not speed shaming anyone, I'm legit wondering how you move that slowly without falling over!

— Shane Saunderson (@ArtificialShane) February 8, 2021

Rein clarified that this is likely because a bike broke down or wasn't returned properly. He doesn't really think anyone is riding a bike for 10 days. But you never know!

Either way it's cool to see how much the city loves cycling.