Impact of Inclement Winter Weather on Border Crossing Traffic: Findings and Implications from Niagara Frontier Border

This paper focuses on one type of critical infrastructure of transportation systems, i.e., international border crossings, and is intended to assess the impact of inclement winter weather such as snow on border crossing traffic volumes. One of the busiest bridge crossings of the Niagara Frontier border, the Peace Bridge, was chosen as the study case. The daily traffic volume data collected from year 2003 to 2009, combined with weather information in the same period, was used to quantify the impact of snow on border crossing traffic. As found from the regression analysis, the daily snowfall, the ground snow accumulation and the average wind speed are significant in discouraging both auto travels and truck trips, and thus reducing border crossing traffic. In terms of vehicle type, truck trips are more prone to snow effects than auto trips. The marginal volume reduction rates with respect to one-inch snowfall range from 2.4% to 3.0% for trucks, but 1.5% to 2.1% for autos. The findings and quantitative effects can be used by traffic operation agencies to estimate changes of border crossing performance under different snow conditions. Meanwhile, the output of these analyses can facilitate the selection of appropriate mitigation strategies.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AH010 Surface Transportation Weather.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Wang, Qian
  • Hu, Jinge
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
• Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; International borders; Regression analysis; Snowfall; Traffic volume; Weather conditions
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I73: Traffic Control;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01473197
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 13-5234
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 19 2013 3:03PM