Impacts of Weather Conditions in Urban Public Transport: Understanding the Effects of Climatic Changes Using Big Data

Nowadays smart cards are largely used in Urban Public Transports (UPT). Due to their capacity for collecting high quantities of detailed information, recently these cards are increasingly used as an important data sources to conduct urban mobility planning studies. Taking into account the ongoing climatic changes and the needs to develop studies based on representative and feasible information, in this work the authors used 63 million smart card boarding transactions to assess the impacts of weather conditions in UPT. To perform this evaluation, hourly transit ridership and weather conditions were collected along a year and linked under the assumption that individuals choose the travel mode based on the weather conditions that are observed during the departure hour. In this study five meteorological variables were analyzed and different travelers profile were considered. Accessibility were assessed by studying the influence of different transport modes, the support infrastructures available and the main functional areas of the city. The analysis was conducted for different periods of the year/week. The results demonstrate that temperature is the weather variable which more impact travelers. Atmospheric pressure seems do not impact them. Older people’s profile are the most affected. This is especially true for bus stations without support infrastructures. Usually, weather conditions have more influence on mobility during weekends and holiday periods. Weekdays have about 15% more journeys during peak hours than weekends. Therefore, with the climate and demographic changes some modifications in the UPT network are expected for some traveler profiles and periods of the year. This is special true for the ageing population group and winter period however other factors as the socio-economic crisis may also leverage even more this trend.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Standing Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Fontes, Tânia
  • Costa, Vera
  • Dias, Teresa Galvão
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Climate change; Environmental impacts; Public transit; Ridership; Urban transit; Weather conditions
• Uncontrolled Terms: Big data
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Environment; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01626835
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-04292
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2017 9:27AM