Cycling and Weather: A Multi-city and Multi-facility Study in North America

This paper examines the impact of weather across utilitarian bicycle facilities in different North American cities, as well as across different facility types (utilitarian, recreational, and mixed-use). For this purpose, automatic hourly bicycle count data is used from Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Portland, and several towns and cities along the “Route Verte” in Quebec. Particular attention is given to the impact of weather on weekdays vs. the weekend, lagged effects of precipitation, and the effects of alternate weather measurements, like dew point temperature. Among the main findings, temperature and humidity were found to be positively and negatively correlated with cycling, respectively, and the effects of both were in some instances observed to be non-linear. Rain can have a strong negative impact on cycling that increases in magnitude with rain intensity. In addition, lagged effects of rain were confirmed, such as rain the previous three hours, rain in the morning only, and rain in the afternoon only. In general, utilitarian facilities behave uniformly across cities, though the sensitivity to weather conditions can vary greatly; Montreal and Portland appear to be least sensitive to weather, with Ottawa appearing most sensitive and Vancouver in the middle. Furthermore, the impact of weather is greater on weekends than or weekdays and on recreational facilities than utilitarian facilities, and mixed-use facilities can exhibit characteristics of both. Finally, dew point depression has a positive effect on cycling.