ShadeMap is a volunteer project built at CityCamp Gainesville Hack Day on September 20, 2026. It ranks Gainesville RTS bus stops by summer heat exposure, service, shelter status and neighborhood need, so that the case for shade at specific stops is visible and data-backed.
This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced by the City of Gainesville, the Regional Transit System (RTS), the University of Florida, NASA, or any government agency. It is an independent analysis of public data. Where the site suggests contacting the City or RTS, those are ordinary public contact channels, and this project does not speak for them.
Everything on this site is provided as is, without warranty of any kind, for informational purposes. Temperatures are satellite estimates with stated limitations, trip counts are a proxy for ridership, shelter status reflects OpenStreetMap coverage rather than a field survey, and rankings can change as data changes. Do not rely on this site for safety-critical decisions. The full method and its limitations are documented in the project repository.
Photos in the stop panels marked as rider submissions are contributed by members of the public, not by this project. Every submission is reviewed by a person before it appears. Contributors confirm they took the photo or have permission to share it and that it shows no faces or license plates. Location and time metadata embedded in photo files is removed in the browser before upload. If a photo of you, your property, or your vehicle appears here and you want it removed, open an issue at the project issue tracker and it will be taken down.
Anyone can suggest a bus stop that is missing from the map. A suggestion stores the map location the reporter marks (the stop's location, not the reporter's), a short description, and optionally the routes served, and nothing else. Suggestions are reviewed by a person before they appear as community-reported markers, and they are clearly labeled as unverified community reports rather than official transit data. Do not include personal information in descriptions; reports containing it will not be approved.
The "Make the case" page formats this project's public data about a stop for printing or sharing, and lists the city commissioner whose district contains the stop, using the city's published district boundaries and public commission roster. Commissioner names are checked on the date shown on the page and can change at elections; verify at gainesvillefl.gov before relying on them. The page is a formatting convenience over public information. What anyone sends to the city is their own message, not this project's.
The "show my location" button uses your browser's location service, and only after you grant permission in the browser prompt. Your position is used on your device to draw the blue dot and center the map. It is never sent to this project, never stored, and never shared; turning the button off, or leaving the page, discards it. You can also revoke the permission in your browser settings at any time, and the rest of the map works exactly the same without it.
If bus markers appear on the map, their positions come from the Regional Transit System's public bus tracker feed. Positions can be delayed, missing, or wrong, and buses can be rerouted or cancelled without the feed showing it. The markers are a convenience, not a promise that a bus is where the map says it is. Check official RTS channels for authoritative service information, and never take risks in traffic based on this map. This project is not affiliated with RTS, and the feed can stop being available at any time.
This site has no accounts, no analytics, and no advertising, and it sets no tracking cookies. When you submit a photo, the site stores the photo (with embedded metadata removed), the date and time you say it was taken, your optional note, and nothing else. It does not collect your name, location, or contact details. Submissions are held in a Supabase project until reviewed. Your browser's local storage is used only to space out repeat submissions. Your device location, if you enable it, stays on your device as described above.
The analysis code and this site are open source in the project repository. Data products derived from OpenStreetMap remain subject to the Open Database License. If you build on this work, credit the sources above the same way.