Policy success or economic slowdown?: effects on air pollution of the 80 km·h-1 speed limit in the Barcelona metropolitan area

• Autores: Germà Bel i Queralt, Jordi Rosell Ferrer
• Localización: XIX Encuentro de Economía Pública: Políticas Públicas para la salida de la crisis, 2012, ISBN 978-84-695-1574-7, pág. 77
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In 2008 the regional government of Catalonia reduced to 80 km·h-1 the maximum speed limit on several zones of urban motorways in the Barcelona metropolitan area. The main reason for promoting that measure was to reduce emissions of NOX and PM10. This works evaluates whether this measure has been successful in promoting air improvement. We use the differences-in-differences method to assess the policy impact.

    Our empirical estimation indicates that the reduction of the speed limit to 80 km·h-1 caused a very slight quality improvement in NOX, reducing by between 0% and 2.1% pollutant air levels. On the contrary, for PM10 levels, the measure could have had the opposite result, by causing an increase by between 0% and 4.2% of pollutant levels in the affected area. In all, our evaluation suggests that the economic slowdown �because of its effects in industrial production and mobility- might have been much more influential on the changes in pollutants that the speed limit change itself.