Air Quality Warnings and Temporary Driving Bans: Evidence from Air Pollution, Car Trips, and Mass-Transit Ridership in Santiago

Nathaly Rivera

No 2019-06, Working Papers from University of Alaska Anchorage, Department of Economics

Abstract: Driving restrictions are a common governmental strategy to reduce airborne pollution and traffic congestion in many cities of the world. Using high-frequency data on air pollution, car trips, and mass-transit systems ridership, I evaluate the effectiveness of temporary driving bans triggered by air quality warnings in Santiago, Chile. I employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that uses the thresholds in the air quality index used to announce these warnings as instruments for their announcement. Results show that these temporary bans reduce car trips by 6-9% during peak hours, and by 7-8% during off-peak hours. This is consistent with air pollution reductions during peak hours, and with increases in the use of Santiago's mass-transit systems during hours the systems run with excess capacity. Increments in mass-transit ridership uncover the importance of alternatives modes of transportation in securing the effectiveness of temporary driving bans.

Keywords: Air Pollution; Pollution Alerts; Environmental Episodes; Driving Restrictions; Latin America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q52 Q53 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-lam, nep-reg, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econpapers.uaa.alaska.edu/RePEC/ala/wpaper/ALA201906.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Air quality warnings and temporary driving bans: Evidence from air pollution, car trips, and mass-transit ridership in Santiago (2021)
Working Paper: The Effectiveness of Temporary Driving Restrictions: Evidence from Air Pollution, Vehicle Flows, and Mass-Transit Users in Santiago (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ala:wpaper:2019-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Alaska Anchorage, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jonathan Alevy ().