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Measuring the Cost of Congestion in Highly Congested City: Bogotá

Author

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  • Akbar, Prottoy
  • Duranton, Gilles

Abstract

We provide a novel approach to estimate the deadweight loss of congestion. We implement it for road travel in the city of Bogotá using information from a travel survey and counterfactual travel data generated from Google Maps. For the supply of travel, we find that the elasticity of the time cost of travel per unit of distance with respect to the number of travelers is on average about 0.06. It is close to zero at low levels of traffic, then reaches a maximum magnitude of about 0.20 as traffic builds up and becomes small again at high levels of traffic. This finding is in sharp contrast with extant results for specific road segments. We explain it by the existence of local streets which remain relatively uncongested and put a floor on the time cost of travel. On the demand side, we estimate an elasticity of the number of travelers with respect to the time cost of travel of 0.40. Although road travel is costly in Bogotá, these findings imply a small daily deadweight loss from congestion, equal to less than 1% of a day’s wage.

Suggested Citation

  • Akbar, Prottoy & Duranton, Gilles, 2017. "Measuring the Cost of Congestion in Highly Congested City: Bogotá," Research Department working papers 1028, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica.
    • Handle: RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1028
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    File URL: https://scioteca.caf.com/handle/123456789/1028
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    Cited by:

    1. Saiz, Albert & Salazar-Miranda, Arianna, 2023. "Understanding Urban Economies, Land Use, and Social Dynamics in the City: Big Data and Measurement," IZA Discussion Papers 16501, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Nicolas Gendron-Carrier & Marco Gonzalez-Navarro & Stefano Polloni & Matthew A. Turner, 2022. "Subways and Urban Air Pollution," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 164-196, January.
    3. Ang, Amanda & Christensen, Peter & Vieira, Renato, 2020. "Should congested cities reduce their speed limits? Evidence from São Paulo, Brazil," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    4. Albert Saiz & Luyao Wang, 2023. "Physical geography and traffic delays: Evidence from a major coastal city," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(1), pages 218-243, September.
    5. Venables, Anthony & Duranton, Gilles, 2018. "Place-Based Policies for Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 12889, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. repec:hal:journl:hal-03403442 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Wang, Xize & Rodríguez, Daniel A. & Mahendra, Anjali, 2021. "Support for market-based and command-and-control congestion relief policies in Latin American cities: Effects of mobility, environmental health, and city-level factors," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 91-108.
    8. Andrew Sudmant & Vincent Viguié & Quentin Lepetit & Lucy Oates & Abhijit Datey & Andy Gouldson & David Watling, 2021. "Fair weather forecasting? The shortcomings of big data for sustainable development, a case study from Hubballi‐Dharwad, India," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 1237-1248, November.
    9. Quentin Max David, 2022. "Gratuité des transports en commun et congestion routière :revue de la littérature et implications pour Paris," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/355382, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    10. Michael L. Anderson & Lucas W. Davis, 2018. "Two Empirical Tests of Hypercongestion," NBER Working Papers 24469, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jonathan D. Hall, 2017. "Improving the fit of structural models of congestion," Working Papers tecipa-590, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    12. Gómez Gélvez, Julian & Mojica, Carlos, 2022. "Subsidios al transporte público en América Latina desde una perspectiva de eficiencia: aplicación a Bogotá, Colombia," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 12260, Inter-American Development Bank.
    13. Yizhen Gu & Chang Jiang & Junfu Zhang & Ben Zou, 2021. "Subways and Road Congestion," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 83-115, April.
    14. Anderson, Michael L. & Davis, Lucas W., 2020. "An empirical test of hypercongestion in highway bottlenecks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    15. Bou Sleiman, Lea, 2023. "Displacing Congestion: Evidence from Paris," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 2302, CEPREMAP.
    16. Russo, Antonio & Adler, Martin W. & Liberini, Federica & van Ommeren, Jos N., 2021. "Welfare losses of road congestion: Evidence from Rome," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    17. Gaduh, Arya & Gračner, Tadeja & Rothenberg, Alexander D., 2022. "Life in the slow lane: Unintended consequences of public transit in Jakarta," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    18. Selod,Harris & Soumahoro,Souleymane, 2020. "Big Data in Transportation : An Economics Perspective," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9308, The World Bank.
    19. Kim, Jinwon, 2019. "Estimating the social cost of congestion using the bottleneck model," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 1-1.
    20. Anupriya, & Bansal, Prateek & Graham, Daniel J., 2023. "Congestion in cities: Can road capacity expansions provide a solution?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    21. Jinwon Kim & Jucheol Moon, 2022. "Congestion Costs and Scheduling Preferences of Car Commuters in California: Estimates Using Big Data," Working Papers 2201, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    22. Kim, Jinwon, 2022. "Does roadwork improve road speed? Evidence from urban freeways in California," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    23. Edgar Gutierrez-Franco & Christopher Mejia-Argueta & Luis Rabelo, 2021. "Data-Driven Methodology to Support Long-Lasting Logistics and Decision Making for Urban Last-Mile Operations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-33, June.
    24. Quintero, Luis E. & Roberts, Mark, 2023. "Cities and productivity: Evidence from 16 Latin American and Caribbean countries," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).

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    Keywords

    Ciudades; Investigación socioeconómica; Transporte;
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