Weather and the MBTA
The effects of weather on the MBTA.
The effects of weather on the MBTA.
How does weather affect MBTA ridership?
Over the past several years, there has been a huge increase in the collection and use of data by all sorts of organizations. Public transit agencies have been collecting enormous amounts of data about their riders, but are faced with the challenge similar to so many others that transforming this data into useful, actionable information can be hard! An initial exploration of MBTA ridership data suggested that weather conditions
have a significant effect on how many people ride the T. In general, we can accurately predict how many people will enter a given station at any time of day just by using historical records of entries on the same day of the week. These models break down when weather conditions force patrons to break from their routines. Our visual tool below helps investigate how ridership changes at any station for varying weather conditions.