Traffic congestion, transportation policies, and the performance of first responders

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.

COVID‐19 lockdown and traffic accidents: Lessons from the pandemic

“…We find no significant impact on either ambulance response time or time to hospital. This is potentially surprising given the large decrease in crashes involving ambulance (Figure 1b) and the literature that shows how traffic affects response time of first responders (Brent & Beland, 2020;Jena et al, 2017). While speculative, Panel (a) of Appendix Figure A.7 might suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has put strains on the emergency response system.…”

The cost of convenience: Ridehailing and traffic fatalities

“…When new technologies are introduced in markets that account for these externalities, they often induce competition with existing products and services that enhance welfare. If these negative externalities are not accounted for, even if the private costs are exceeded by the private benefits for the individual user, the social costs may not be (see e.g., Beland and Brent (2018), who examine the effects of traffic congestion on first responders, and Scott et al (2021) who explore unintended responses to IT enabled monitoring). It is the sum of social and private costs as compared to the sum of social and private benefits that is key to welfare effects.…”

“…Our findings suggest the need for models of optimal operations of RH and similar driving‐gig platforms that account for the externalities imposed by such operations 4 . If negative externalities are not accounted for, even if the private costs are exceeded by the private benefits for the individual user, the social costs may not be (see e.g., Beland and Brent (2018), who examine the effects of traffic congestion on first responders, and Scott et al (2021) who explore unintended responses to IT enabled monitoring). Considering such externalities should be an important input into operations research models that analyze optimal operations (such as pricing schemes) of new technological solutions.…”

Comprehensive Analysis of Housing Estate Infrastructure in Relation to the Passability of Firefighting Equipment

“…Publications from Pennsylvania State University (USA) [11] discuss the arrival times to the location of an incident together with a main focus on the impacts and economic losses associated with the time lost by the emergency services in reaching the fire location due to traffic congestion.…”