When Labor Disputes Bring Cities to a Standstill: The Impact of Public Transit Strikes on Traffic, Accidents, Air Pollution, and Health

Stefan Bauernschuster, Timo Hener and Helmut Rainer

No 5313, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Many governments have banned strikes in public transportation. Whether this can be justified depends on whether strikes endanger public safety or health. We use time-series and cross-sectional variation in powerful registry data to quantify the effects of public transit strikes on urban populations in Germany. Due to higher traffic volumes and longer travel times, total car hours operated increase by 15% during strikes. This effect is accompanied by a 14% increase in vehicle crashes, a 20% increase in accident-related injuries, a 14% increase in particle pollution, and an 11% increase in hospital admissions for respiratory diseases among young children.

Keywords: public transit; strikes; traffic; air pollution; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 L91 Q53 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5313.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: When Labor Disputes Bring Cities to a Standstill: The Impact of Public Transit Strikes on Traffic, Accidents, Air Pollution, and Health (2017)
Working Paper: When Labor Disputes Bring Cities to a Standstill: The Impact of Public Transit Strikes on Traffic, Accidents, Air Pollution, and Health (2015)
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:ces:ceswps:_5313

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().