Marginal Effect of Road Construction on Traffic Speed: Evidence From New York City

Road Construction, which is proposed as a solution to severe congestion, might rise an increase in commuting time and decease in traffic speed due to the poor management or delay in completion. This paper sets up a traffic dataset with 2 million real-time traffic speed data and 13,000 construction record data from 2017 – 2019, to estimate the marginal effect of road construction on traffic speed in New York City and evaluate the efficiency of construction contrast. The main finding is that traffic speed will decrease by 3.47% on average when vehicles are 1km closer to road project. Speed decreases slower when vehicles are further from construction. Besides, long duration and “unplanned” project has greater effect on vehicles speed. The estimated cost of decrease in speed is about $326-451 per hour, which is relatively higher than penalty in construction contrast. Based on this, this paper suggests a bonus for early completion or a higher penalty on late completion should be considered in road construction contrast.