Subways and Urban Air Pollution / Nicolas Gendron-Carrier, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, Stefano Polloni, Matthew A. Turner.

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Gendron-Carrier, Nicolas

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w24183.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: We investigate the effect of subway system openings on urban air pollution. On average, particulate concentrations are unchanged by subway openings. For cities with higher initial pollution levels, subway openings reduce particulates by 4% in the area surrounding a city center. The effect decays with distance to city center and persists over the longest time horizon that we can measure with our data, about four years. For highly polluted cities, we estimate that a new subway system provides an external mortality benefit of about $1b per year. For less polluted cities, the effect is indistinguishable from zero. Back of the envelope cost estimates suggest that reduced mortality due to lower air pollution offsets a substantial share of the construction costs of subways.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w24183 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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January 2018.

We investigate the effect of subway system openings on urban air pollution. On average, particulate concentrations are unchanged by subway openings. For cities with higher initial pollution levels, subway openings reduce particulates by 4% in the area surrounding a city center. The effect decays with distance to city center and persists over the longest time horizon that we can measure with our data, about four years. For highly polluted cities, we estimate that a new subway system provides an external mortality benefit of about $1b per year. For less polluted cities, the effect is indistinguishable from zero. Back of the envelope cost estimates suggest that reduced mortality due to lower air pollution offsets a substantial share of the construction costs of subways.