“Should Congested Cities Reduce Their Speed Limits?” by Ang Essay

Article Review

Personal transport has been a high-demand thing since its invention, and the number of cars continues to grow along with the global population of human beings. Urban, suburban and rural infrastructure is becoming more and more congested every year in advanced nations and emerging countries. Many variables in transport systems, multiplied by the imperfection of technology and logistics and the human factor, lead to vehicle accidents of high severity consequences for all directly involved stakeholders, namely drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. Ang et al. (2020) state that “road injuries are the leading cause of unnatural deaths worldwide, representing 27.1% of all human unnatural deaths” (p. 2). Public authorities and transport industry technologists are developing and looking for transportation programs and innovations to reduce road accidents quantitatively and qualitatively. Cost-efficient, technologically undemanding, and easy-to-implement ones are the most sought-after. The 2015 Sao Paulo speed limit program is a good example, and it can become a definitive solution to reduce the car collision experience in the developing states.

Transportation Program Description

The transportation program enacted by the São Paulo public authorities was conceptually simple but extremely socially efficient. They set a speed limit on city roads, monitored through a network of traffic surveillance utilizing security cameras. Although this policy to ensure the safety of transport users and pedestrians lasted only about a year and a half, it achieved incredibly positive social and logistical results. According to Ang et al. (2020), “the 2015 speed limit program reduced road accidents by 21.7% on treated road segments, resulting in approximately 1,889 averted road accidents and 104 averted fatalities within the first 18 months of adoption” (p. 3). Unfortunately, this measure was canceled in 2017 despite its significant positive humanitarian and cultural impact on the São Paulo population and local driving culture.

Debunking the Myth of the Economic Harm of Restrictive Transportation Programs

There is a general belief among some experts and newcomers in the logistics and transport fields that speed limit policies within cities result in high social costs due to slowed down and reduced economic processes. Ang and her colleagues debunk this idea in their scholarly paper through the means of quantitative analytic tools. The researchers calculated that the positive side of this policy outweighs the social costs by “at least 1.32 times” (Ang et al., 2020, p. 1). However, one should remind themselves of the research setting of a developing economy within which these conclusions were developed.

Value of Research Context and Inferences for Others

One needs to note the highly high contextual weight of the findings and inferences Ang et al. made in their academic work. The authors mention that similar speed limiting transportation programs within the urban area will be effective mainly in other parts of the developing world, especially where there are significant subpopulations of economically disadvantaged pedestrians and motorcyclists (Ang et al., 2020). It means that applying the described public intervention in the setting of a developed nation would probably have zero or even adverse socio-economic effects.

Conclusion

This paper is a brief overview of a study on a transportation program whose implementation was successful and resulted in a reduction in vehicle collision experience. The theme of the work of Ang and her colleagues was to investigate the social influence of an 18-month public initiative to reduce the speed of vehicles in the urban area of São Paulo. The implemented measure was found to be very promising, but its nature is of high context.

Reference

Ang, A., Christensen, P., & Vieira, R. (2020). Should congested cities reduce their speed limits? Evidence from São Paulo, Brazil. Journal of Public Economics, 184, 1-102. Web.