Urban Adaptation to Climate Shocks: The Case of Heavy Rain in NYC

The media reports that NYC received almost a month's total of rain in 3 hours recently.  While this imposed some time and inconvenience costs, I see little evidence from the following NY Times story that the city was "crippled" by this shock.   Urban areas are already ready for such shocks. Since we are urbanized, we can adapt.   For every person in the city during the rainstorm, how was their day disrupted? What would they be willing to pay for this storm event not to occur?  For everyone trying to  get to NYC (the people at the airports) or get out of NYC, were they productive? What did they lose?  This is the "smallball" of what must be quantified to measure the adaptation costs of climate change.

Over the course of just a few hours on Friday, a heavy downpour sent floodwaters through the streets, shutting down roads, stranding motorists, and causing delays on transit systems throughout the New York region.

Central Park received about three inches of rain — about two-thirds of its typical monthly total — nearly doubling the previous record for the day recorded in 1871, according to the National Weather Service. Other areas around the city received two to three inches of rain. Flooding was reported throughout much of the area, including SoHo and Chelsea in Manhattan; Dumbo and Gowanus in Brooklyn; and parts of Staten Island, New Jersey and Long Island.

The floodwaters forced partial closures of many roads around the city, including portions of the West Side Highway, the Van Wyck Expressway, and a ramp off the George Washington Bridge to the Harlem River Drive, according to the city’s Office of Emergency Management.

And the storm delivered a jolt to the city’s transit systems, closing two tracks and an entrance at Penn Station, causing delays in the subway after flooding in at least one station and pooling on the floor at the Oculus at the World Trade Center transportation hub downtown.

Hundreds of flights into and out of the region’s three main airports — John F. Kennedy International Airport, La Guardia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport — were canceled, according to the flight data site FlightAware.

Ferries and buses running to the Frieze New York art fair on Randalls Island, were canceled, a spokeswoman said. The rain began to taper off Friday evening from its midday peak.

Suppose that 250 flights were cancelled and that each flight has 250 people on board.  Suppose that each person lost $1,000 in time and annoyance, then then the total cost for this group is $62.5 million.  This is sizable but small in the grand scheme of things.    The New York Times didn't report any fatalities.

I take this case study to be good news as a natural experiment that sophisticated rich cities can take a serious punch from Mother Nature.