Over the past five years or so, a concerted effort was made to document the otherwise intuitive thesis that there are very real direct and indirect relationships between weather and the operations, maintenance, and utilization of public transit systems of all types in both urban and rural environments. A seminal work entitled, Weather Information for Surface Transportation - National Needs Assessment Report, was prepared by the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology (OFCM) and released in 2002. That report covered all modes of surface transportation including public transit systems in terms of identifying particular weather elements and their impacts on the varied transit activities and required action decision responses. This paper will summarize those findings and discuss those impacts as they affect two major stakeholders: 1) management and 2) users.

Management considerations affect such items as maintenance and operations. User issues involve transit modal choice considerations and bus stop weather.

Future efforts will focus on several areas: 1) Implementing weather driven management decision procedures for transit similar to those utilized by the Management Decision Support System implemented by FHWA for highway maintenance officials; 2) Establishing specifications for weather related 511 transit information and messages; and 3) Continued research on identifying weather parameters and how they interface with transit operations and utilization.