Traffic Congestion, Transportation Policies, and the Performance of First Responders

Daniel Brent and Louis-Philippe Beland

No 20-08, Carleton Economic Papers from Carleton University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Traffic congestion is a growing problem in urbanizing economies that results in lost time, health problems from pollution, and contributes to the accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions. We examine a new external cost of traffic by estimating the relationship between traffic congestion and emergency response times. Matching traffic data at a fine spatial and temporal scale to incident report data from fire departments in California allows us to assign traffic immediately preceding an emergency. Our results show that traffic slows down fire trucks arriving at the scene of an emergency and increases the average monetary damages from fires. The effects are highly nonlinear; increases in response time are primarily due to traffic in the right tail of the traffic distribution. We document an additional externality of traffic congestion and highlight the negative effect of traffic on a critical public good.

Keywords: Traffic; Public Goods; Externalities; Emergency Response Times (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 Q50 R41 R42 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2020-05-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-exp, nep-hea, nep-res, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published: Carleton Economics Papers

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Journal Article: Traffic congestion, transportation policies, and the performance of first responders (2020)
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