Mapping demand at soi grain in Bangkok
An amphoe is a political shape. A rider does not wait in an amphoe. A rider waits on a soi, often behind a hotel, sometimes in a rain shadow where the app still thinks the pin is “at the restaurant.”
Heatmap Studio exists because district averages flatter everyone. Watthana can look healthy while two blocks of Asok are a pickup trap. When we overlay demand, available riders, and wait minutes at soi grain, the argument changes: you stop hiring “more riders for Bangkok” and start moving a handover pin twelve metres.
Building that map is not a colour gradient exercise. You need joins that do not destroy timestamps, a decision about GPS jitter, and the humility to leave holes where you have no pings. Students in Bangkok Metro Dispatch Intelligence spend weeks 3–5 on this. The teaching set includes a porte-cochère that swallowed Friday 19:40. Several alumni have written to say their own city had a twin.
If your geocoder snaps everything to main roads, soi grain is a fantasy. Say so. A honest coarse map beats a pretty lie. We would rather you present a limitation note than a heatmap that invents alleys.
Chiang Mai’s Sunday walking street is in the later flagship weeks for contrast: vendor close-times and pedestrian flows break road-network assumptions that Bangkok night markets only hint at. One method, two cities, different scars.