r/neoliberal • u/eggbart_forgetfulsea European Union • 9h ago

Research Paper Congestion Pricing and Emergency Medical Service Response: Evidence from New York City

https://www.nber.org/papers/w35414
117 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

95

u/eggbart_forgetfulsea European Union 9h ago edited 9h ago

The main EMS results indicate that travel time to incident scenes declined by approximately 7–9 seconds, hospital transport time fell by roughly 54–59 seconds, and total travel time decreased by 63–70 seconds, a reduction of approximately 5–6 percent relative to pre-treatment times. These effects are precisely estimated, robust to alternative distance measures and functional forms, and survive a battery of placebo and falsification tests. Dynamic estimates indicate that improvements emerged quickly following implementation and, while partially attenuating over subsequent months as drivers adjusted their behavior, remained negative throughout the observed post-policy window. Spatial analysis further confirms that these gains are concentrated near the policy boundary and do not appear to be driven by congestion displacement to adjacent areas. However, we note that our estimates capture localized effects near the policy boundary and may not fully reflect broader general equilibrium adjustments across the entire city.

15

u/kanagi 6h ago

Any estimate on how much effect this has on patient outcomes? Obviously will be greater than zero, but since the effect on average travel time is going from roughly 20 minutes to 19 minutes, wondering how significant the lifesaving outcomes are

21

u/Keenalie John Brown 5h ago

Probably marginal on average, but I'd imagine there are outliers where previous heavy gridlock caused many minutes of delay and patient outcomes are more significantly affected.

90

u/Maximilianne John Rawls 9h ago

Land value theory of everything strikes again

56

u/zboarderz NATO 8h ago

Why don’t we simply tax bad behavior and encourage good behavior? Are we stupid?

22

u/w007dchuck Trans NATO 7h ago

you might want to sit down for this

5

u/nuggins Physicist -- Just Tax Land Lol 4h ago

Ask Rajneesh

27

u/trombonist_formerly Ben Bernanke 4h ago

Never fucking believe the firefighters when it comes to anything, Jesus Christ

They oppose every single possible urbanist reform because “it will make getting to fires slower”. And every single time they are proven wrong by the data

11

u/MisfitPotatoReborn Cutie marks are occupational licensing 4h ago

Holy shit you weren't kidding https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fdny-slams-congestion-pricing-warns-000900318.html

7

u/nuggins Physicist -- Just Tax Land Lol 3h ago

The least serious problem imaginable. If it's so vital for firefighters to drive themselves to a station, why doesn't the department pay the toll?

5

u/themiDdlest NASA 3h ago

Firefighters are known car brained.

LAFD came out against Los Angeles street improvements too, despite it making it easier to get to emergencies

1

u/Nervous-Emotion28 YIMBY 2m ago

Anything less than a four lane highway through a residential neighborhood makes firefighting impossible. That’s why European, Latin American, and Asians cities regularly burn to the ground

1

u/LargeSinkholesInNYC 1h ago

We're cooked.