The Effects of Weather on Passenger Flow of Urban Rail Transit

Xiaoyuan Wang,Yongqing Guo,Shanliang Liu,Shijie Liu,Chenglin Bai,Junyan Han

doi:10.28991/cej-2020-03091449

Abstract

Predicting passenger flow on urban rail transit is important for the planning, design and decision-making of rail transit. Weather is an important factor that affects the passenger flow of rail transit by changing the travel mode choice of urban residents. This study aims to explore the influence of weather on urban rail transit ridership, taking four cities in China as examples, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. To determine the weather effect on daily ridership rate, the three models were proposed with different combinations of the factors of temperature and weather type, using linear regression method. The large quantities of data were applied to validate the developed models. The results show that in Guangzhou, the daily ridership rate of rail transit increases with increasing temperature. In Chengdu, the ridership rate increases in rainy days compared to sunny days. While, in Beijing and Shanghai, the ridership rate increases in light rainfall and heavy rainfall (except moderate rainfall) compared to sunny days. The research findings are important to understand the impact of weather on passenger flow of urban rail transit. The findings can provide effective strategies to rail transit operators to deal with the fluctuation in daily passenger flow.

Highlights

The passenger flow estimation of urban rail transit is commonly used as the basis for the planning, design, and daily operations of rail transit
R2 increases when a weather variable is added to the model, which indicates that the weather factor is related to passenger flow of rail transit
It was found that the effects of the two weather factors on ridership rate vary in the four cities, probably because people perceive weather conditions differently in different urban environment

Summary

Introduction

The passenger flow estimation of urban rail transit is commonly used as the basis for the planning, design, and daily operations of rail transit. Weather can influence people’s travel mode choice, and have an impact on passenger flow of rail transit. With the rapid development of urban rail transit, one challenge is to figure out the impacts of weather factors on passenger flow of rail transit. Inclement weather has an impact on people’s travel modes and travel routes, and further affects on passenger flow in public transport [10, 11]. Cravo et al [13] found that rain and snow have negative impacts on passenger flow of bus and subway

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