Critical Transit Infrastructure in Smart Cities and Urban Air Quality: A Multi-City Seasonal Comparison of Ridership and PM2.5
Fuente:
arXiv
Gespeichert in:
| Hauptverfasser: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2026
|
| Schlagworte: | |
| Online-Zugang: | |
| Tags: |
Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
|
| _version_ | 1866914441484828672 |
|---|---|
| author | Elliott, Sean Roy, Sohini |
| author_facet | Elliott, Sean Roy, Sohini |
| contents | Public transit is a critical component of urban mobility and equity, yet mobility and air-quality linkages are rarely operationalized in reproducible smart-city analytics workflows. This study develops a transparent, multi-source monitoring dataset that integrates agency-reported transit ridership with ambient fine particulate matter PM2.5 from the U.S. EPA Air Quality System (AQS) for four U.S. metropolitan areas - New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, using two seasonal snapshots (March and October 2024). We harmonize heterogeneous ridership feeds (daily and stop-level) to monthly system totals and pair them with monthly mean PM2.5 , reporting both absolute and per-capita metrics to enable cross-city comparability. Results show pronounced structural differences in transit scale and intensity, with consistent seasonal shifts in both ridership and PM2.5 that vary by urban context. A set of lightweight regression specifications is used as a descriptive sensitivity analysis, indicating that apparent mobility-PM2.5 relationships are not uniform across cities or seasons and are strongly shaped by baseline city effects. Overall, the paper positions integrated mobility and environment monitoring as a practical smart-city capability, offering a scalable framework for tracking infrastructure utilization alongside exposure-relevant air-quality indicators to support sustainable communities and public-health-aware urban resilience. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_19937 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Critical Transit Infrastructure in Smart Cities and Urban Air Quality: A Multi-City Seasonal Comparison of Ridership and PM2.5 Elliott, Sean Roy, Sohini Physics and Society Computers and Society Public transit is a critical component of urban mobility and equity, yet mobility and air-quality linkages are rarely operationalized in reproducible smart-city analytics workflows. This study develops a transparent, multi-source monitoring dataset that integrates agency-reported transit ridership with ambient fine particulate matter PM2.5 from the U.S. EPA Air Quality System (AQS) for four U.S. metropolitan areas - New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, using two seasonal snapshots (March and October 2024). We harmonize heterogeneous ridership feeds (daily and stop-level) to monthly system totals and pair them with monthly mean PM2.5 , reporting both absolute and per-capita metrics to enable cross-city comparability. Results show pronounced structural differences in transit scale and intensity, with consistent seasonal shifts in both ridership and PM2.5 that vary by urban context. A set of lightweight regression specifications is used as a descriptive sensitivity analysis, indicating that apparent mobility-PM2.5 relationships are not uniform across cities or seasons and are strongly shaped by baseline city effects. Overall, the paper positions integrated mobility and environment monitoring as a practical smart-city capability, offering a scalable framework for tracking infrastructure utilization alongside exposure-relevant air-quality indicators to support sustainable communities and public-health-aware urban resilience. |
| title | Critical Transit Infrastructure in Smart Cities and Urban Air Quality: A Multi-City Seasonal Comparison of Ridership and PM2.5 |
| topic | Physics and Society Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19937 |