Project Summary
Resilience in urban transportation systems is critical for limiting congestion and air pollution. This project seeks to empirically evaluate the crucial role of information provision in managing severe disruptions to urban transportation networks. To evaluate these effects I will exploit a series of BART system shutdowns during the past decade, some of which were unexpected andothers of which occurred with prior warning. These shocks give rise to an “event study design” that can cleanly estimate the effects of the sudden disruptions. More importantly, the heterogeneity in the shocks enables me to separately measure the effects of service disruptions when policymakers and commuters have time to prepare for disruptions and when they do not. The proposed research project will measure these effects using rich traffic speed data collected from thousands of GPS-enabled devices. These data will yield precise estimates across all relevant freeways of the effects of anticipated and unanticipated disruptions. Furthermore, I intend to merge these data with pollution monitor data to estimate the downstream effect of heavy traffic congestion on local air pollutants. The final results should be of direct relevance to policy makers tasked with managing congestion and limiting transportation-related emissions in urban settings.
