The Impact of Weather Phenomena on Passenger Volumes for Commuter Trains

Ruben Kuipers; Michelle Ochsner

Abstract

Weather impacts several aspects of our daily life, of which the way we travel is one. The relationship between weather phenomena and ridership of trains has not received much attention previously. The study we present here aims to understand the impact of temperature, wind, and precipitation on passenger volumes for commuter trains. To do so we make use of automatic passenger count and weather data from over a million unique station stops, spanning two years, in the Southern region of Scania in Sweden. Our findings show that changes in the level of precipitation do not affect the volume of boarding passengers. Statistically significant effects are found for changes in temperature and wind speeds. These effects are most prominent for departures outside of peak hours. The results are useful for planning more accurate dwell times and rolling stock circulations and can serve as inputs during real-time rescheduling problems and demand modelling

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - 2023
Event	11th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation - ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Duration: 2023 Sept 6 → 2023 Sept 8 https://heart2023.org/

Conference

Conference	11th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation
Abbreviated title	hEART
Country/Territory	Switzerland
City	Zurich
Period	2023/09/06 → 2023/09/08
Internet address	https://heart2023.org/

Subject classification (UKÄ)

Transport Systems and Logistics

Free keywords

Trains
weather
planning
passengers
railway

Access to Document

https://transp-or.epfl.ch/heart/2023/abstracts/hEART_2023_paper_840.pdfLicence: Unspecified

PMR: Punctual Metropolitan Railways – an analysis of delays at stations and effects of altered dwell time planning approaches and effective traveller exchanges
Palmqvist, C.-W. (Project coordinator), Kuipers, R. (Research student), Winslott Hiselius, L. (Supervisor) & Olsson, N. (Assistant supervisor)
2020/01/01 → 2024/12/31
Project: Research

Cite this

@conference{4376b677caaa49b791eab75a6a6ec514,

title = "The Impact of Weather Phenomena on Passenger Volumes for Commuter Trains",

abstract = "Weather impacts several aspects of our daily life, of which the way we travel is one. The relationship between weather phenomena and ridership of trains has not received much attention previously. The study we present here aims to understand the impact of temperature, wind, and precipitation on passenger volumes for commuter trains. To do so we make use of automatic passenger count and weather data from over a million unique station stops, spanning two years, in the Southern region of Scania in Sweden. Our findings show that changes in the level of precipitation do not affect the volume of boarding passengers. Statistically significant effects are found for changes in temperature and wind speeds. These effects are most prominent for departures outside of peak hours. The results are useful for planning more accurate dwell times and rolling stock circulations and can serve as inputs during real-time rescheduling problems and demand modelling",

keywords = "Trains, weather, planning, passengers, railway",

author = "Ruben Kuipers and Michelle Ochsner",

year = "2023",

language = "English",

note = "11th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation, hEART ; Conference date: 06-09-2023 Through 08-09-2023",

url = "https://heart2023.org/",

}

TY - CONF

T1 - The Impact of Weather Phenomena on Passenger Volumes for Commuter Trains

AU - Kuipers, Ruben

AU - Ochsner, Michelle

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Weather impacts several aspects of our daily life, of which the way we travel is one. The relationship between weather phenomena and ridership of trains has not received much attention previously. The study we present here aims to understand the impact of temperature, wind, and precipitation on passenger volumes for commuter trains. To do so we make use of automatic passenger count and weather data from over a million unique station stops, spanning two years, in the Southern region of Scania in Sweden. Our findings show that changes in the level of precipitation do not affect the volume of boarding passengers. Statistically significant effects are found for changes in temperature and wind speeds. These effects are most prominent for departures outside of peak hours. The results are useful for planning more accurate dwell times and rolling stock circulations and can serve as inputs during real-time rescheduling problems and demand modelling

AB - Weather impacts several aspects of our daily life, of which the way we travel is one. The relationship between weather phenomena and ridership of trains has not received much attention previously. The study we present here aims to understand the impact of temperature, wind, and precipitation on passenger volumes for commuter trains. To do so we make use of automatic passenger count and weather data from over a million unique station stops, spanning two years, in the Southern region of Scania in Sweden. Our findings show that changes in the level of precipitation do not affect the volume of boarding passengers. Statistically significant effects are found for changes in temperature and wind speeds. These effects are most prominent for departures outside of peak hours. The results are useful for planning more accurate dwell times and rolling stock circulations and can serve as inputs during real-time rescheduling problems and demand modelling

KW - Trains

KW - weather

KW - planning

KW - passengers

KW - railway

M3 - Abstract

T2 - 11th Symposium of the European Association for Research in Transportation

Y2 - 6 September 2023 through 8 September 2023

ER -