Ex-urban sprawl as a factor in traffic fatalities and EMS response times in the southeastern United States.
Journal of Economic Issues › Vol. 40 Nbr. 4, December 2006
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Ex-urban sprawl as a factor in traffic fatalities and EMS response times in the southeastern United States.
Many different writers (Atkinson and Oleson 1996; Barnett 1995; Burchell and Lisotkin 1995; Burchell et al., 1998; Carruthers and Ulfarsson 2002; Ciscel 2001; Ewing 1997; and Glaeser and Kahn 2003) have examined the direct and indirect costs of unplanned growth or sprawl. However, an area only recently examined is the impact of sprawl on traffic fatalities (Ewing, Schieber and Zegeer, 2003; Lucy 2003; and Lucy 2000). Besides a case study of the Chicago area, which found emergency medical services (EMS) delays due to sprawl (American Farmland Trust 1998), another issue not examined on a larger scale is the degree to which sprawl might be contributing to delays in EMS. In this research note, we develop models similar to the ones used by Reid Ewing, Richard Schieber and Charles Zegeer (2003), Stefan Felder and Henrik Brinkmann (2002) and Theodore Keeler (1994) in order to assess the impact that the built environment has on EMS response times and the rate of traffic fatalities in the southeastern United States.
Reid Ewing (1997) reviews 17 studies concerning sprawl and identifies four characteristics defining it: low-density, strip development, scattered development, and leapfrog development. Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson (1997), in their criticism of planners who promote "compact cities," suggest that sprawl is low density, dispersed, decentralized, polycentric (many centers), and suburban. The universal mobility of the auto has allowed job and home to be miles apart. Americans are driving more every year in large part because of the increasingly spread out nature of our metro areas (U.S. Dept. of Transportation (DOT), National Transportation Statistics 1999). The 2001 National Household Travel Survey reports that although Americans were making fewer trips by motor vehicle, average time per trip had gone up including the commute to work (U.S. Department of Transportation 2004). Edward Glaeser and Matthew Kahn (2003) contend th...See the full content of this document
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