Nobody likes public transportation strikes. Public transportation users have to scramble their way to work, universities and school, while regular car drivers have to navigate through much more congested roads. The 2017 paper “When Labor Disputes Bring Cities to a Standstill: The Impact of Public Transit Strikes on Traffic, Accidents, Air Pollution, and Health “ by Stefan Bauernschuster, Timo Hener, and Helmut Rainer show that in addition to the discomforts public transportation strikes cause, they also affect hospitalization rates.
In 1951, the International labor organization (a UN agency)
declared strikes to be a fundamental right of organized labor. National laws and regulations around the
world prohibit certain public sectors which deems essential to strike, such as
armed forces or policemen.
The paper aims to quantify how essential is the public
transportation sector and whether public transportation strikes pose public
health and safety risks that might justify a ban on such strikes. To do so, the
researchers use 71 one-day public transportation strikes which took place
between 2002 to 2011, in the five largest cities in Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich,
Cologne, and Frankfurt. Germany offers a perfect setting for this research for
two main reasons: first, the right to strike in the public transportation
sector is protected by the German courts, hence such strikes occur there quite often.
Second, public transportation is usually the main mean of transportation for
commuters in German cities, for example in 2014, 43% of commuters in Berlin
used public transportation, while 38% of commuters traveled by car.
The potential risks public transportation strike present
arise from the increased usage of private cars. The paper focuses on two
mechanisms through which the increased usage of private cars during public
transportations strikes can affect public health. The first one is through the
increased likelihood of car accidents, and through the increase in air
pollution.
The first analysis in the paper evaluates the increase in
traffic due to the strikes. The researchers find that during morning rush hours on strike days,
there are on average 131 more passengers cars per hour on highways (a 2.5%
increase) and 78 more passengers cars on non-highway roads (a 4.3% increase). The
effect is at its highest between 6 AM to 7 AM where an increases are of
magnitude 7.7% and 9.4% for highways and non-highways respectively. The average
increase of passenger’s cars during the evening rush hours is milder and is
less than 2%. A potential explanation for the difference might lay with
commuters having more flexibility over the decision when to leave work rather
than when to arrive to work – on strike days commuter might decide to leave
work earlier or later than usual because of anticipated traffic congestions. As
a result of the increase in the number of cars on the roads, the researchers
estimate an increase of 8.4% in the time traveled during morning rush hours and
a more modest effect of an increase in 3.8% during the evening rush hours.
Are there more car accidents on strike days?
Looking at the effect of strikes on car-accidents the numbers
at first seem striking - a 14% increase
in the number of car accidents during morning peak hours and 20% increase in
the number of persons injured. Yet the “raw” numbers might seem less impressive
– the increases are of absolute values of 0.6 (yes less than 1) more car
accidents and of 0.8 more persons injured. There was no increase in the severity
of the injuries.
Sharp increase in the number of children hospitalized on strike days
Strikes increase on average during morning rush hours the
amount of particle pollution (PM 10) by around 5 µg/m3. What does an increase of 5 µg/m3 mean? PM
10 particles are all particles contained an aerodynamic diameter of less than
10 µm. These include smoke, dust, soot, salts, acids, and metals. The EU has
set two limit values for particulate matter (PM10) for the protection of human
health: the PM10 daily mean value may not exceed 50 micrograms per cubic metre
(µg/m3) more than 35 times in a year and the PM10 annual mean value may not
exceed 40 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3). On an average non-strike day in
the sampled cities, the morning levels are 37.63. On a strike day the level of
pollutants is on average 42, this is an increase of 13.3%. The higher air pollution levels rises in turn
the hospitalization rates for pollution related respiratory illnesses. The
measured effect is the most striking for children under 5 years old. On an
average non-strike day there are in total 61 hospitalizations for pollution
related respiratory illnesses, 8 of them are of children under 5. The
researchers measure an increase between 0.472 and 1.29 in the amount of
hospitalizations among children below 5. This is an increase of 34% percent! The
researchers note however that the stark increase in children hospitalization is
not proportional to the increase of 13.3% in air pollution. It could well be that other strike-related factors are influencing
children respiratory illnesses, such as longer exposure elevated air pollution,
or the additional stress public transportation strikes might bear on young
children such as changes in drop off or pick up routines from the kindergarten.
For the whole population the measured effect cannot be distinguished from zero.
To summarize their findings the researchers quantify the
costs associated with the strikes. They assume there are 931,000 commuters in a
city and use their estimated effects of strikes on travel time (a 8.4%
increase) to calculate that all commuters combined spend roughly additional
62,000 hours on the roads during strike days. To calculate the public costs of
the strike they set the value of an hour to be 52 Euro (if my time had this
value in the economy I probably won’t have started this blog) , given this setup
they calculate the costs of strike to be 3.2 million Euro. If the minimum wage
in Germany at 2011 – 8 Euro - was taken as
the value of an hour, the calculation would have resulted in a cost of 496,000
euro a much lower cost.
The paper’s results go beyond the question of whether public
transportation strikes should be allowed. The paper quantifies the importance public
transportation in mitigating pollution caused by the transportation sector. Private
cars are responsible for 12% of total EU emissions of
CO2, understating to what extent public transportation can help in reducing
emissions is a key in designing the environmental policies of the future.
As for the immediate future, I will strive to limit my time
outdoors during public transportation strike days, these are probably not the
best days to take the children to the park.
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