railtrails

This R data package provides rail information about rail trails from the excellent TrailLink website, sponsored by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. Includes information (such as name, length, surface, and reviews) 3,846 trails in every state in the United States.

Installation

You can install railtrails with the install.packages() function.

install.packages("railtrails")

Loading the data

Here is how to load the data:

d <- railtrails::railtrails
d
#> # A tibble: 3,846 x 11
#>    state name  distance surface category mean_review description n_reviews
#>    <chr> <chr>    <dbl> <chr>   <chr>          <int> <chr>       <chr>    
#>  1 AK    Chas…     14   Dirt, … Rail-Tr…           4 "\r\n     … 1 Reviews
#>  2 AK    Tony…     11   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "The Tony … 5 Reviews
#>  3 AK    Bird…     13   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "\r\n     … 3 Reviews
#>  4 AK    Camp…      7.5 Asphal… Greenwa…           5 "\r\n     … 3 Reviews
#>  5 AK    Goos…      1.5 Asphal… Greenwa…           0 "\r\n     … 0 Reviews
#>  6 AK    Home…      4   Asphalt Greenwa…           5 "On the so… 1 Reviews
#>  7 AK    Lani…      3.9 Asphal… Greenwa…           3 "The Lanie… 1 Reviews
#>  8 AK    Palm…      6.1 Gravel  Rail-Tr…           0 "As its na… 0 Reviews
#>  9 AK    Ship…      2.6 Asphalt Rail-Tr…           4 " \r\nShip… 1 Reviews
#> 10 AL    Chie…     33   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "In northe… 77 Revie…
#> # ... with 3,836 more rows, and 3 more variables: raw_reviews <list>,
#> #   lat <dbl>, lng <dbl>

"Unnesting" trail reviews

You may want to "unnest" the list-column with reviews in the following way:

library(tidyr)
d <- railtrails::railtrails
d <- d %>% unnest(raw_reviews)
d
#> # A tibble: 24,413 x 11
#>    state name  distance surface category mean_review description n_reviews
#>    <chr> <chr>    <dbl> <chr>   <chr>          <int> <chr>       <chr>    
#>  1 AK    Chas…     14   Dirt, … Rail-Tr…           4 "\r\n     … 1 Reviews
#>  2 AK    Tony…     11   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "The Tony … 5 Reviews
#>  3 AK    Tony…     11   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "The Tony … 5 Reviews
#>  4 AK    Tony…     11   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "The Tony … 5 Reviews
#>  5 AK    Tony…     11   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "The Tony … 5 Reviews
#>  6 AK    Tony…     11   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "The Tony … 5 Reviews
#>  7 AK    Bird…     13   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "\r\n     … 3 Reviews
#>  8 AK    Bird…     13   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "\r\n     … 3 Reviews
#>  9 AK    Bird…     13   Asphalt Rail-Tr…           5 "\r\n     … 3 Reviews
#> 10 AK    Camp…      7.5 Asphal… Greenwa…           5 "\r\n     … 3 Reviews
#> # ... with 24,403 more rows, and 3 more variables: lat <dbl>, lng <dbl>,
#> #   raw_reviews <int>

Shiny App

An interactive web application (Shiny) for finding the top-rated trails in each state is available here. The source code is in the app directory.

Notes

• See more information about the variables with ?railtrails

• If you like using this package, please consider visiting or even making a donation to the Rails to Trails Conservancy at via https://www.traillink.com/

• The data was last updated 2018/2/2

• Contributions are welcome. Pull requests and requests for features can be made on GitHub

• Thank you to Bob Rudis for feedback that helped to improve this package

Code of conduct

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.