Mattia Borsati (p), Albert Gragera, Daniel Albalate

Tom Gillespie

We quantify the effect of public transportation fare subsidies on air quality by exploiting the sharp discontinuity in the cost of ridership introduced by policy intervention. We identify this effect by taking advantage of four months of massive discounts for transit services introduced in Spain on September 1, 2022, as part of the national plan to tackle the global energy crisis. Across pollutants and specifications, we find no evidence that low-cost or free-of-charge public transportation financing schemes have improved air quality. Our results reveal that measures aimed at reducing transit prices may fail to achieve the claimed environmental benefits through a modal shift from private to collective modes of transport, which suggests that massive fare discounts may not represent an efficient allocation of public funds.

Alex Sanz (p), Jordi Perdiguero, Oriol Vila

Mattia Borsati

Air pollution has become one of the main causes of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and, at the same time, of mortality on a global scale, especially in urban areas. In order to reduce this problem, supranational, national, regional and, local governments have implemented policies that sought to reduce pollutant emissions. However, the impact of a large city on the populations that surround it, that is, smaller cities surrounding it, has not been studied. Our main objective is to analyze if there is a direct relationship between a good public transport network, in our case, railways, and low levels of pollution in small cities and municipalities near Barcelona. In this context, this paper analyses the impact of public transport strikes on air quality in smaller cities and municipalities near Barcelona using a dataset from January 2008 to December 2016. Using a difference-in-difference approach we show that pollution increases when people cannot use public transport in those small towns and municipalities with access to train stations. From our results, we can infer that expanding public transportation in smaller cities can improve air quality in those areas. Our results can be used to provide useful information to improve air quality in municipalities near big cities.

Tom Gillespie (p), Thomas McDermott, Ronan Lyons

Alex Sanz

This paper focusses on the supply-side effects of flood risk. We ask – Is development policy giving enough consideration to flood risk? Is housing delivery being prioritized over scientifically assessed risk in the context of a increased population and no recent major flood events? A unique dataset of individual planning permissions and detailed flood risk maps allows us to explore this issue. Preliminary results suggest that the rate of development in flood risk zones is almost the same as outside risk zones – 2.5% of applications inside risk zones vs 3.1% of Eircodes. Further data work will allow deeper analysis into the reason for these developments