Shearston Jenni A, Saxena Roheeni, Casey Joan A, Kioumourtzoglou Marianthi-Anna, Hilpert Markus
Department of Environmental Health Sciences Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health New York NY USA.
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management School of Public Health University of California Berkeley Berkeley CA USA.
Geohealth. 2024 Dec 11;8(12):e2024GH001050. doi: 10.1029/2024GH001050. eCollection 2024 Dec.
During the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, stay-at-home policies such as New York's (NY) NY on Pause dramatically reduced traffic congestion. Despite high traffic burden in NY's environmental justice communities, this reduction has not been evaluated through an environmental justice lens-our objective in this analysis. We obtained census tract-level traffic congestion data from Google traffic maps hourly for 2018-2020. We defined congestion as the percent of streets in a census tract with heavy traffic (red- or maroon-color). We used the Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) to measure racialized economic segregation and the CDC's Environmental Justice Index (EJI) as a measure of combined environmental, social, and chronic disease burden. We divided census tracts into quintiles of ICE and EJI and used linear mixed models stratified by ICE and EJI quintile in an interrupted time series design. Prior to NY on Pause, less marginalized and burdened census tracts (Q5) tended to have higher levels of traffic congestion; during NY on Pause, this trend reversed. For both ICE and EJI, more marginalized and burdened (Q1-Q2 vs. Q4-Q5) tracts had smaller absolute decreases in percent traffic congestion. For example, percent traffic congestion in ICE Q5 decreased by 7.8% (% change: -36.6%), but in Q1, it decreased by 4.2% (% change: -51.7%). NY on Pause, while protecting residents during COVID-19, may have resulted in inequitable reductions in traffic congestion. It is critical that such inequities are measured and acknowledged so that future policies to reduce traffic congestion and respond to pandemics can enhance equity.
在2019年冠状病毒大流行期间，纽约州的“暂停纽约”等居家政策显著减少了交通拥堵。尽管纽约州环境正义社区的交通负担很重，但这种减少尚未通过环境正义的视角进行评估，这是我们本次分析的目标。我们从谷歌交通地图中每小时获取2018 - 2020年人口普查区层面的交通拥堵数据。我们将拥堵定义为人口普查区内交通繁忙（红色或栗色）街道的百分比。我们使用极端集中度指数（ICE）来衡量种族化的经济隔离，并使用疾病控制与预防中心的环境正义指数（EJI）来衡量环境、社会和慢性病负担的综合情况。我们将人口普查区分成ICE和EJI的五分位数，并在中断时间序列设计中使用按ICE和EJI五分位数分层的线性混合模型。在“暂停纽约”之前，边缘化和负担较轻的人口普查区（Q5）往往交通拥堵程度较高；在“暂停纽约”期间，这种趋势发生了逆转。对于ICE和EJI而言，边缘化和负担较重的地区（Q1 - Q2与Q4 - Q5相比）交通拥堵百分比的绝对下降幅度较小。例如，ICE Q5的交通拥堵百分比下降了7.8%（变化百分比：-36.6%），但在Q1中，下降了4.2%（变化百分比：-51.7%）。“暂停纽约”在保护新冠疫情期间居民的同时，可能导致了交通拥堵减少的不公平现象。至关重要的是，要衡量并承认这种不公平现象，以便未来减少交通拥堵和应对疫情的政策能够增强公平性。
