Estimación de los costos económicos de la congestión vehicular en Quito en el año 2016

Abstract

Transport is a vital activity in a country's economy. However, this activity is characterized by the existence of significant negative externalities such as environmental pollution, traffic accidents, noise, and vehicular congestion. Quito, because of its status as Ecuador's capital, is a political, administrative and economic reference point for the national and international community, but its traffic congestion problems warn that the future of the city's mobility will be unsustainable. the economic costs of vehicular congestion are necessary for the development and implementation of programs that help mitigate this problem. For this reason, the present work, through a methodological process that analyzes the cost of vehicular congestion from the point of view of the excess of time that the users invest in their displacements, made an estimate of the economic costs of vehicular congestion in Quito in 2016, finding that this problem, with a subjective valuation of time based on the Basic Unified Salary of 2016, cost him USD 133.8 million; and with a subjective assessment of time based on the average income cost USD 296.3 million.