Covid-19 on Conor McLaughlin

What Happened to Traffic Enforcement in Santa Monica?

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 22:17:31 -0700

Earlier today, a friend sent me a link I knew I had to turn into a quick blog post - an article published August 5th in the Santa Monica Next titled “SMPD Stats Show Shocking Drop in Traffic Enforcement”.

The piece shares traffic stop and crash data obtained from the City Manager’s office. It shows a large, sustained decline in the number of citations written by the Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD) starting with the onset of the COVID pandemic, and continuing through today.

The New Golden Handcuffs - Residential Mortgages

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 21:16:55 -0700

One of my most strongly held hypotheses about the world is that the US housing market is in the early stages of a slowdown that is going to last for quite a while.

This concept, of course, is not news - I don’t claim to have invented it! But I recently found some interesting data which helps support my thoughts, and as such I thought it might be interesting to walk through my thesis, talk through the drivers, and see what supporting data we can find to support the argument.

What Portland's Shared Mobility Data Tells (And Doesn't Tell) Us About Micromobility Usage in 2019-2021

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 19:37:24 -0800

On December 16th, the City of Portland filed a press release that I wish more cities would publish - a quantitative recap of their shared mobility program!

Portland’s Public Data

Open Data Portal

The crown jewel of the data released is the city’s “Open Data Portal”, which contains an interactive map heatmap of trip activity, the ability to export summary trip metrics, and information about the most commonly utilized street segments. It’s very fun to play around with, and kudos to the City for publishing this data and making it easily exportable.

Race and Gender Disparities in LA County’s COVID Vaccinations

Sat, 10 Apr 2021 15:00:00 -0700

Data recently released by LA County shines a light on some fascinating (and troubling) trends in terms of who in the county has been vaccinated.

Nearly 5 million doses have already been administered in total through April 9th, across the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which is certainly an impressive accomplishment from a public-health perspective, and will only continue to rise once the entire adult population becomes eligible for the vaccine on April 15th.

Visualizing MLB Stadium Capacity and Scheduled Opening Day Attendance for the 2021 Season

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 22:37:31 -0700

On March 2nd, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas lifted the state’s mask mandate, and removed all capacity restrictions on restaurants and businesses. Precisely a week later, the Texas Rangers announced that they would be taking full advantage of the Governor’s new rules, and they would be utilizing the entire 40,518 person capacity at Globe Life Field to open their season.

One of my favorite sports websites, The Athletic, covered the Ranger’s situation in a bit more detail earlier this week, comparing their laissez-faire attendance policy to what other MLB teams around the country have chosen to open the year with - which seems to be about one-quarter capacity on average.

Visualizing the Airline Industry's COVID Contraction

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 21:28:50 -0700

What is it about human nature which always pulls us towards what we can’t have? While I’ve been marooned at home due to Coronavirus, my travel wanderlust has been running rampant. I don’t know if it’s the work-from-home in particular, or if taking international travel off the table makes it that much more alluring, but the bottom line is that I can’t shake a desire to just go somewhere.

One of the ways this wanderlust has manifested itself has been me spending a lot of time reading about the airline industry, which is going through some pretty significant changes right now. I won’t necessarily get into all the details, but it’s fair to say that airlines will need to work through a lot of thorny structural problems over the next few months and years. Rapid adoption of videoconferencing as a legitimate alternative to business travel and decreased desire for high-density tourist activities like Disneyland present huge problems on the demand side, and on the supply-side, airlines will need to figure out what to do with a surplus supply of expensive planes and the thousands of pilots, flight attendants, and other employees which kept those planes running.

COVID-19 Mobility Trends Part 2: Visualizing Google's Data

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 19:43:25 -0700

Two days ago, I published a new blog post where I broke down mobility data that Apple had generously made public to aid cities, researchers, and the public at large. One of the things I noted in my post was that while the granularity of Apple’s data trailed what Google had previously shared, Apple made their data easily accessible via CSV download, while Google’s data (though seemingly great) was locked up in PDF files.

Digging Deeper Into Apple's COVID-19 Mobility Trends Data

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 22:28:13 -0700

Earlier this week, Apple released a trove of mobility data, published to help cities and the public understand the real-world impacts of the COVID-19 disease on human movement across the world. This data comes a bit after Google’s publishing of Community Mobility Reports, which also seek to provide insight into behavior.

While Google’s data, due to their widespread tracking of Android device locations, is able drill into detailed points of interest such as grocery stores, transit stations, and workplaces, Apple’s data, which is based upon Apple Maps direction requests, shows a more narrow slice of user behavior. However, given the tremendous install base of iPhones globally, it’s definitely a great signal into what folks are up to, and better yet, it is accessible as a CSV, while Google’s data is locked up inside PDFs.

The COVID-19 Pandemic, Seen Through Restaurant Traffic and Social Distancing

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 11:28:46 -0700

As the COVID-19 coronavirus sweeps across the globe, it presents a public health crisis that is daunting to even the best-prepared communities. While most Western nations have resisted the strict quarantine regime that China first implemented in Wuhan, local and national governments are grappling with the best way to contain the spread of the virus, and will need to make critical decisions in the coming days and weeks.

For those who have not seen it, the Washington Post put together an excellent model on how infection spreads and the potential benefit of alternative approaches to quarantines, such as moderate and extensive “social distancing”. Social distancing, which is a nebulous term but tends to imply a self-driven withdrawal from public to avoid contact and transmission of the virus, may end up being the best option for many communities in the United States while the Trump administration struggles to put together a coherent response plan to the virus.