Weather Impact on Transit Ridership in Chicago

This paper explores the weather-ridership relationship and its potential applications in transit operations and planning. Using the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) as a case, the paper investigates the impact of five weather elements (temperature, rain, snow, wind, and fog) on daily bus and rail ridership, and its variation across modes, day types, and seasons. The resulting relationships are applied to the CTA ridership trend analysis, showing how preliminary findings may change after controlling for weather. The paper emphasizes the importance of having a theoretical framework encompassing weather and travel.