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HARVARD CENTER FOR RISK ANALYSIS
Traffic congestion is a significant issue in virtually every urban area in the United States and around the world. Anyone who spends any time commuting knows that the time and fuel wasted while sitting in traffic can not only be annoying, but can lead to real economic costs. An examination of the peer-reviewed literature shows that there are many previous analyses that estimate the economic costs of congestion based on fuel and time wasted, but that these studies don’t include the costs of the potential public health impacts. Sitting in traffic leads to higher tailpipe emissions which everyone is exposed to, and the economic costs of those exposures have not been explored.