• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.83-92
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• 2014

Weather condition is one of the crucial factors affecting travelers' mode choice. Nevertheless, there are numerous indefinite traffic phenomena under various weather conditions. This study was conducted to verify the hypothesis that transit riderships decrease as precipitation increases. To clarify the relationship between precipitation and transit ridership, a seemingly unrelated regression model was employed with data such as daily precipitation and daily transit riderships of 3 transit modes (bus, metro, and shuttle bus) collected in Busan for recent 24 months. The estimation results show that transit riderships decreased as the daily precipitation increased when the daily precipitation is greater or equal to 10mm/day (0.169%, 0.101%, and 0.172% reduction in bus, metro, and shuttle bus riderships, respectively, when the daily precipitation increased by 1mm). When comparing the impact of precipitation on transit riderships by modes using a cross-equation parameter restriction test, the decrease in metro ridership is relatively insensitive to the change in precipitation. However, the negative coefficient of precipitation in the metro ridership estimation model indicates that the transit users in Busan may alter their mode to taxi or automobile and/or may give up the trip itself in bad weather condition.