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Income, Weather, and Transit Dependence: Examining Public Transportation Ridership in the Chicago Metropolitan Area

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Income, Weather, and Transit Dependence: Examining Public Transportation Ridership in the Chicago Metropolitan Area McCormack | Page 1 Income, weather, and transit dependence: Examining public transportation ridership in the Chicago Metropolitan Area Kristen McCormack April 23, 2015 Pomona College, Claremont, CA I. Introduction Weather and Public Transit In the United States, there is an ongoing debate about the future of public transit systems. Many factors affect the popularity of public transit, including the quality, price, and convenience of services, the characteristics of alternatives to services, demographic factors, and cultural norms. The effects on transit demand of many of these factors, including the price of public transit, the price of gasoline, service quality and frequency, income, car ownership, and attitudes towards transit have been studied extensively. The relationship between weather and public transit ridership, however, has only recently been explored. Weather is expected to cause changes in transit ridership by affecting the quality of service, travel time, and experience travelling to and waiting for transit service. The effect of weather on transit decisions can be characterized by two key behavioral responses. First, people may substitute one form of transportation for another. For example, if heavy snow increases traffic congestion or causes roads to seem less safe, people may decide to use public transit instead of travelling by car. Second, weather may affect ridership by changing the type, frequency, and timing of discretionary trips. For example, pleasant weather may lead to more frequent trips to the park while rain may cause cancellations in sporting events or outdoor public gatherings. People may plan more flexible errands around weather; for example, people may delay trips to the grocery store if, on a given day, they expect the experience of accessing public transit to be particularly undesirable. The same type of trip may be more discretionary for some people than it is for others. For example, some people may have flexible work hours or the option of working from home while others may face more severe consequences for failing to appear at their workplace at a designated time. Previous studies have focused on the relationship between weather and system-wide public transit ridership. Generally, these studies have observed that adverse weather is correlated with lower ridership. One study of the relationship between changes in weather and changes in daily bus and rail ridership in the Chicago area found that warmer temperatures and the existence of fog led to higher ridership while wind, rain, and snow led to a decrease in ridership; extreme weather had no significant effect. As expected, the study also found that bus ridership was more sensitive to weather variation than was rail ridership (Guo et al., 2007). The positive relationship between temperature and ridership and negative relationship between wind, rain and ridership was also observed in a study of buses in Gipuzkoa, Spain (Arana et al., 2014). In a study of bus ridership in Pierce County, Washington, Stover et al. (2012) similarly found that rain, cold temperatures in winter, snow in fall and winter, and wind in all seasons except summer were associated with a lower bus ridership. A study of transit choice in Bergen, Norway, found that wind was the most important variable in explaining travel mode. Generally, however, weather McCormack | Page 2 was observed to have little effect on decisions to switch between methods of public and private transportation (Aaheim and Hauge, 2005). While considerable progress in this area has been made in recent years, there remain significant gaps in existing literature. Some studies have considered the relationship between absolute weather conditions and ridership and some have studied the relationship between relative weather conditions, or changes in conditions from the previous day, and ridership; however, no studies have considered the effects of both absolute and relative conditions in a single model. This is concerning because if relative and absolute weather effects are correlated, models that fail to consider both relative and absolute weather may suffer from omitted-variable bias. In addition, no studies have compared the effects on ridership of relative and absolute weather conditions. Transit Dependence The effect of transit dependence on the relationship between weather and transit ridership also remains unexplored. It has been widely observed that the demographic characteristics of a population affects how that populations uses public transit. In particular, significant differences have been observed between how people of different levels of income use public transit systems. Glaeser et al. (2008) suggested that the poor tend to live closer to city centers in order to have better access to public transit. In the United States, people with low incomes tend to travel less and take shorter trips than people with higher incomes. While a large proportion of both low- and high-income populations travels by car, low-income persons are more likely to walk or bike and are more likely to use bus or rail services than are high-income persons. They are also more likely to be regular users of public transit (Guiliano, 2005). Many of these differences may be attributed to lower rates of automobile ownership among low-income populations. Low-income households are less likely to own a car (Guiliano, 2005) and more likely to share a car among multiple drivers than are high-income households (Waller, 2005). Lacking access to a car causes lower-income individuals to be more transit dependent. Their demand for transit is therefore expected to be less responsive to changes in price or other factors. Indeed, the price elasticity for car owners (-0.41) is more than four times as large as the price elasticity of non-car owners (-0.10) (Gillen, 1994). Despite the well-studied differences in transit use by people of different income levels, no studies have explicitly considered how income may affect the relationship between weather and transit ridership. Questions concerning transit dependence may be especially important to ask given the trend over the past century, noted by Garrett & Taylor (1999), in which public transit ridership has increasingly been comprised of people who are transit dependent due to age, income, or physical limitations. Over time, public transit systems have been losing market share to private vehicles, and during this decline, public transit systems have extended services to wealthier areas rather than improving service for the poor (Garrett & Taylor, 1999). Transit authorities have received heavy criticism in response to these policies. Changing Climate Understanding the relationship between weather and public transit ridership, including how this relationship is affected by the income of riders and potential riders, is increasingly important in light of current and future climactic change. Climate change is expected to increase global mean surface temperatures by 0.3˚C to 4.8˚C by the end of the 21st century (IPCC WG1 McCormack | Page 3 AR5, 2014).1 However, this change is not expected to be uniform across regions or across time. In addition, climate change will likely increase the variability of weather and frequency and severity of extreme weather events (Meehl et al., 2000; Greenough et al. 2001; Easterling et al., 2000). There will likely be fewer days characterized by extreme cold and more days characterized by extreme heat. In addition, heat waves are expected to occur higher frequently and to last longer. Precipitation events will also likely occur more frequently and be more intense. (IPCC WG1 AR5, 2014). Since weather appears to affect ridership and this effect is likely different for populations of different incomes, gaining a better understanding of how extreme weather and increased variability in weather will affect ridership may provide insight into future public transit use. Policy Relevance Studying how income affects the relationship between weather and ridership, especially in a changing climate, is highly relevant to current social, political, and economic debates. A better understanding of the relationship between weather and transit use may enable improved transportation system design and superior service provision by transportation authorities. It may also have significant urban planning and public health implications. For example, understanding how travel behavior changes in response to extreme weather may inform more targeted interventions, such as the opening of shelters and public, temperature-controlled buildings in times of extreme heat or cold. In addition, understanding how different populations may respond to extreme heat may enable more directed public health warning systems. Therefore, gaining a better understanding of how extreme weather and increased variability in weather will affect ridership may enable improved public policy and business practices. II. Case Study of the Chicago Transit Authority Overview This study hopes to addresses the gaps in the weather-transit literature by considering how income affects the relationship between ridership and absolute and relative weather conditions. To explore these relationships, the paper focuses on ridership within the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) rail system from 2001 to 2013. Climate of Chicago The metropolitan area of Chicago is characterized by a continental climate. It has a significant urban heat island effect that causes the city of Chicago to be warmer than surrounding areas by, on average, 2°F. The
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