Estimation of Productivity Loss Due to Traffic Congestion: Evidence from Bengaluru City

As an economy grows, mobility demand will surge up due to the increased personal income level which is often met by private vehicular ownership. Inadequate infrastructure, especially in a developing country like India, has led to severe traffic congestion, causing huge economic loss. The literature is profound in quantifying the direct economic losses of traffic congestion; mainly, there is an array of research established for estimation of the time cost of traffic congestion. In the effort to estimate the direct costs of traffic congestion, researchers have ignored the impacts of indirect cost, mainly on productivity. Apart from behavioral studies that assess the psychological impact of traffic congestion, there are very few studies which estimate the productivity loss of traffic congestion. The present study has tried to address the issue by estimating the productivity loss due to traffic congestion for a developing country city, Bengaluru. The study estimated loss of productive hours due to the late arrivals caused by traffic congestion would be around 7.07 lakh hours in 2018 for Bengaluru city which would cost around Rs. 11.7 billion. The main cause of the problem can be indicated as supply-side development of road network and there is an urgent need of demand-side management of traffic in the cities of developing countries.