Impacts of Weather on Urban Bus Performance in the City of Calgary, Alberta
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2023-02-23
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There is an extensive body of literature on the impacts of adverse weather on traffic performance and transit ridership; however, only a few research have investigated the impacts of adverse weather on urban bus performance. Traffic congestion and unfavourable road conditions caused by adverse weather directly affect the performance of buses. Also, adverse weather impacts buses indirectly by affecting the passengers. This study aims to evaluate the impacts of adverse weather (rainy and snowy weather) on urban bus performance in the City of Calgary. This research focuses on the impacts of rain and snow on seven bus routes in the City of Calgary. Calgary Transit provided the automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter data for 2019-2021. The weather data was supplied by the Calgary International Airport and included daily snowfall and 5-minute rainfall data from 16 rain gauges along the bus routes. Statistical tests and public transit performance measures have been employed in this study to assess the impacts of rainy and snowy weather on the buses. The Man-Whitney test was used to identify significant changes in the median of ridership, run time, dwell time and travel time. In addition, Levene’s test was employed to capture significant changes in the variance of run time, dwell time and travel time. Moreover, six measures from four categories of public transit performance measures (schedule adherence, headway, travel time, and wait time) were used to evaluate the impacts of rainy and snowy weather on bus performance. On-time Performance, coefficient of variation of headway, service regularity, coefficient of variation of travel time, 90th-50th percentile travel time, and excess wait time were all used to determine the effect of rain and snow on bus performance. This study found that there is a negative impact of rainy and snowy weather is definite on bus performance. However, the level of impact varies by route and data groups, which suggests considering other influential factors on the performance of buses along with weather for more detailed results.
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Mohammadi, M. (2023). Impacts of weather on urban bus performance in the City of Calgary, Alberta (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.