Paper Details

TRB 91st Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Event Number:	539
Event Title:	Bicycle Planning and the Built Environment
Event Date:	Jan 24 2012 10:45AM- 12:30PM
Event Location:	Hilton, International Center
Event Description:
Event Agenda:

Seasonal Autoregressive Model of Vancouver Bicycle Traffic Using Weather Variables (12-2119)

Many cities are pursuing programmatic and infrastructural improvements for cycling in order to grow cycling’s mode share. The considerable fluctuations in bicycle traffic counts need to be better understood in planning for cycling’s expansion. This paper uses hourly bicycle count and weather data that is continuous and year-round to develop a model for the level of bicycle traffic in Vancouver, Canada. This study uses seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) analysis to account for complex serial correlation patterns in the error terms and tests the model against actual bicycle traffic counts. Temperature, rain, rain in the previous 3 hours, humidity and clearness are all found to be significant. The ARIMA and simple regression models are compared and it is found that the magnitude and significance of weather variables are exaggerated when serial correlations are not accounted for. In addition to the ARIMA analysis, a supplemental survey was conducted to better understand cyclists’ unique behaviors and attitudes. It is found that 58% of general cyclists consider weather when deciding whether or not to bike, with most, 77%, basing their decision on current rather than forecasted or recent weather. Finally, transit, which is found to be the most common alternative for cyclists, is 2 to 4 times more likely to be chosen as an alternative than travel by automobile.

Authors
     Gallop, Christopher , University of British Columbia, Canada
     Tse, Cindy , University of British Columbia, Canada
     Zhao, Jinhua , University of British Columbia, Canada