NYC Ambulance Response Times by Month and Borough
Aggregate statistics from the article “The ambulance is slower: where the extra time goes”
No synthetic records. Published or computed tabulations containing no person-level records.
- Records
- Aggregate statistics
- Place
- New York City
- Version
- 1.0.1,
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0; code MIT
- Built for
- The ambulance is slower: where the extra time goes (version 1.0.1)
Ambulance response to calls ultimately classed as life-threatening rose by a minute and three-quarters in fiscal 2026, to the slowest year in the city's figures since 1988. The extra time appears before and after an ambulance is assigned, not in the 911 call. For calls urgent from the start the rise was about a minute, most of it after assignment, as ambulance capacity fell and calls did not rise.
The article's own data file, aggregate statistics cut to what it analyses, and the script that computes every figure in it. Computed from: FDNY EMS Incident Dispatch Data, monthly sums, January 2005 to June 2026; 911 End-to-End Data, weekly, November 2013 to the week of 24 August 2026; Mayor's Management Reports, fiscal 1988 to 2026.
Files
| File | Rows | Size | What it holds |
|---|---|---|---|
| data.csv | 9,248 | 450 KB | The aggregate statistics the article's figures are computed from. |
| analysis.py | 32 KB | The script that computes every figure in the article (MIT). |
Columns
data.csv: The data (11 columns)
month, fy, borough, life_threatening_final, life_threatening_initial, valid_times, held_call, incidents, sum_response_s, sum_dispatch_s, sum_travel_s. The article and its script
define each one.
Sources
- Mayor's Office of Operations — Mayor's Management Report, Fiscal 2026, Fire Department chapter, Released 17 September 2026; the indicators table and narrative on pages 61-62
- Mayor's Office of Operations — Mayor's Management Report archive: fiscal 1997 and 1999 summary volumes, fiscal 2001 volume I, fiscal 2006 report, and fiscal 2016 and 2021 Fire Department chapters, Released each September, 1997 to 2021; the city's figure for every fiscal year from 1988
- Mayor's Office of Operations — FY03 - FY12 MMR Agency Performance Indicators (NYC Open Data jhjm-vsp8), Fiscal 2003 to 2012, as last printed
- FDNY — EMS Incident Dispatch Data (NYC Open Data 76xm-jjuj), January 2005 to June 2026, last updated by the city 15 July 2026; summed by month on the city's server (from January 2016 by borough and call flags, from January 2005 for life-threatening calls alone), retrieved 1 and 2 October 2026
- NYC Office of Technology and Innovation — 911 End-to-End Data (NYC Open Data t7p9-n9dy), Weekly, November 2013 to the week of 24 August 2026, last updated by the city 10 September 2026; retrieved 1 October 2026
- Chikish, Colman, Dave, Humphreys, Santamaria and Winship — Congestion Pricing and Emergency Medical Service Response: Evidence from New York City, NBER Working Paper 35414, Issued July 2026, revised August 2026; a working paper, not peer-reviewed
- amNY — FDNY EMS life-threatening emergency response time climbs nearly 2 minutes as staffing and pay crisis deepens, 21 September 2026
Licence and credit
Data CC BY 4.0; the script MIT. Records we counted from government files stay under their publishers' terms. Public-use microdata are disclosure-protected records derived from survey responses, published by the issuing agency so that no respondent can be identified; synthetic records are generated by SparkyData and correspond to no real person, household or address. Neither may be used to identify anyone.
Credit it as:
SparkyData (2026). NYC Ambulance Response Times by Month and Borough (version 1.0.1). Data CC BY 4.0.
https://sparkydata.dev/data/nyc-ambulance-response-times-by-monthThe article gives the charts, the uncertainty of each comparison and a changelog. Corrections and questions: sparkytech.dev@gmail.com, or see corrections.