An analysis of air-mass effects on rail ridership in three U.S. cities

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2009

Publication Title

Journal of Transport Geography

Volume

17

Issue

3

First page number:

198

Last page number:

207

Abstract

This paper examines whether daily weather affects ridership in urban transportation systems. When examining human–weather relationships, it is often advantageous to examine air masses, which take into account the entire parcel of air over a region. Spatial synoptic classification characterizes air masses based upon numerous meteorological variables at a given location. Thus, rather than examining temperature or precipitation individually, here we compare daily ridership to synoptic air mass classifications for three urban rail systems: Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), and the Hudson–Bergen light-rail line in northern New Jersey. Air masses are found to have a significant impact on daily rail ridership, with usage typically increasing on dry, comfortable days and decreasing on moist, cool ones, particularly on weekends. Although the comfort of a particular air mass changes throughout the year, seasonality is not a significant factor with respect to the air mass–ridership relationship. The results of this study can benefit rail system managers who must predict daily ridership or in the development of cost-benefit analyses for station improvements.

Keywords

Air masses; Climate; Local transit – Ridership; Rail transit; Ridership; Urban transportation; Weather

Disciplines

Civil Engineering | Environmental Engineering | Environmental Sciences | Meteorology | Transportation | Urban Studies

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or use interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the article. Publisher copyright policy allows author to archive post-print (author’s final manuscript). When post-print is available or publisher policy changes, the article will be deposited

Publisher Citation

Adam J Kalkstein, Michael Kuby, Daniel Gerrity, James J Clancy, An analysis of air mass effects on rail ridership in three US cities, Journal of Transport Geography, Volume 17, Issue 3, May 2009, Pages 198-207, ISSN 0966-6923, 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2008.07.003.

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