The Association of Trail Use With Weather-Related Factors on an Urban Greenway

Abstract

Purpose:To study the association between weather-related measures and objectively measured trail use across 3 seasons.Background:Weather has been reported as a barrier to outdoor physical activity (PA), but previous studies have explained only a small amount of the variance in PA using weather-related measures.Methods:The dependent variable of this study was trail use measured as mean hourly trail counts by an infrared trail counter located on a greenway. Each trail count represents 1 person breaking the infrared beam of the trail counter. Two sources of weather-related measures were obtained by a site-specific weather station and a public domain weather source.Results:Temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation were significantly correlated with trail counts recorded during daylight hours. More precise hourly weather-related measures explained 42% of the variance in trail counts, regardless of the weather data source with temperature alone explaining 18% of the variance in trail counts. After controlling for all seasonal and weekly factors, every 1°F increase in temperature was associated with an increase of 1.1 trail counts/hr up to 76°F, at which point trail use began to slightly decrease.Conclusion:Weather-related factors have a moderate association with trail use along an urban greenway.