Recent UCLA graduate Anne Yoon MURP ’23 has garnered national acclaim for her outstanding work in the field of transportation planning. The Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) has honored Yoon with the Neville A. Parker Memorial Award for her capstone project, “Bus Shelter Equity: A study of the distribution of bus shelters in Los Angeles County and unincorporated communities.”
The CUTC, founded in 1979 to promote the work of transportation research centers and organizations nationwide and encourage their collaboration with government and industry, annually recognizes exceptional graduate students for their doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, and non-thesis master’s reports. Yoon’s project that highlighted significant disparities in the distribution of bus stop shelters claimed the top honor for non-thesis master’s report in the field of policy and planning. She is the 13th student from UCLA to win the award since 2002.
Expressing her surprise and gratitude for the award, Yoon said, “I never would have guessed my research would have been recognized in this way. What an honor to join the group of phenomenal research produced by Parker awardees.”
To satisfy their degree requirements, Master of Urban and Regional Planning students conduct applied planning research with real-world clients. Yoon knew when she was deciding on a topic and client for her capstone project that she wanted to focus on a tangible issue that impacted transit riders’ everyday trips. She worked with the Office of L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who was interested in the distribution of bus shelters within the 2nd District and unincorporated areas in the county. Her capstone project was supported by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and UCLA ITS.
Through bus stop data and a variety of equity measures, Yoon found dramatic disparities in bus shelter provision across the county. The 2nd District — home to portions of Los Angeles, Inglewood, Compton and El Segundo — emerged with the greatest share of unsheltered bus riders in the county, reaching nearly 40%. Yoon’s equity analysis also identified that 90% of the highest-priority unsheltered stops were located in the 1st and 2nd Districts.
Yoon said the results weren’t surprising given the historical disinvestment in these communities, but that research like hers still plays a key role.
“Without understanding at the very least the current state of our distribution of public resources like bus shelters, the compounding effects of racist policies that produce such inequities will persist. And complacency is complicity with the status quo,” said Yoon, who joined Mitchell’s office after graduation as an assistant deputy of transportation and infrastructure.
Yoon’s faculty advisor Paul Ong, director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, commended her work ethic and quality of analysis.
“Anne is among the most talented, brightest and dedicated students that I have had the privilege of meeting during my career at UCLA,” Ong said. “Her analysis was incredibly top-rate, academically solid and impactful in the real world. The capstone epitomizes the type of professional work that our students are capable of doing to promote social justice.”
In addition to the CUTC Parker award, Yoon’s research also won the UCLA ITS capstone grand prize in June. She will formally receive the CUTC award at a ceremony in January in Washington, D.C.
