Projects

Principal Investigator:

Adonia Lugo

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The state of California and regional transportation planning agencies have committed to shifting mode share away from driving as a central strategy for reducing carbon emissions; despite these aims, cities have struggled to attract more users to transit, walking, and biking systems, and today’s users face exposure to traffic violence and other safety concerns. Would a worker-centered street safety model attract more investment in active transportation projects?

Principal Investigator:

Travis Longcore

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This project will help Caltrans better understand and manage the environmental impacts of artificial light at night. A team of experts will create tools and guidelines to bring lighting considerations into everyday planning and construction. The work will focus on four areas: improving collaboration among engineers, biologists, and environmental reviewers; recommending how to best tailor light to protect wildlife; updating standard specifications for lighting design and shielding; and addressing the impacts of temporary construction lighting. Together, these efforts aim to ensure that Caltrans projects reduce harm from artificial lighting while maintaining safety and function.

Principal Investigator:

Youngseo Kim

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This project develops a city-scale transportation network planning tool that leverages diverse, transportation-related data sources across California. The tool supports a wide range of research agendas by enabling detailed predictions of travel demand patterns — capturing destination, mode, and route choices — as well as traffic volumes on individual road segments. In light of evolving demographics, infrastructure, and emerging mobility services, this tool offers a robust foundation for data-informed investment decisions and policy development for both new and existing transportation services.

Principal Investigator:

Evelyn Blumenberg

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This study examines how transportation subsidies affect travel behavior among low-income individuals across different neighborhood types in Los Angeles County. Building on promising results from Phase I of LA Metro's Mobility Wallet, this project analyzes how $1,800 in transportation subsidies distributed to 2,000 participants influences travel outcomes between urban and suburban residents.

Principal Investigator:

Hao Ding

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Communities in wildland urban interface areas face elevated risk of wildfire exposure. The existing fire evacuation literature has examined whether, when, and how to evacuate as well as behavioral variability in travel across demographic groups. These studies often rely on data from convenience samples that are not representative of all evacuees, and few studies collected qualitative data related to evacuation travel. Further, there is a gap in understanding evacuation travel from large urban wildfires like the Los Angeles January 2025 wildfires. This project seeks to address these issues.

Principal Investigator:

Brian D. Taylor

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Since the 2000s, the rise of remote working, online shopping, gaming and streaming has led to Americans spending more time at home and getting out and traveling less. These enduring changes imply a long-term decline in personal travel and simultaneously an increase in commercial travel from rising demand for delivery services, suggesting that transportation policy and management may need to shift to meet the changing travel demands and needs of people and goods, while promoting environmental and equity goals.

Principal Investigator:

Regan Patterson

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What is the relationship between transportation infrastructure investments, particularly highway expansions, warehouse development, freight travel, and air quality? This project analyzes three case study communities to answer these questions.

Principal Investigator:

Michael Manville

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California’s housing affordability and transit ridership crises are heavily influenced by how cities zone for new development. In an effort to accommodate growth while minimizing political opposition, some jurisdictions propose corridor-based upzoning — concentrating new housing along major roads — instead of more expansive area-based upzoning that extends into surrounding neighborhoods. This project uses scenario testing to evaluate the relative impacts of these two approaches on housing capacity, affordability, and transit access across several California metro areas.

Principal Investigator:

Sriram Narasimhan

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This project will focus primarily on Caltrans’ Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC) method, which is a commonly employed Alternative Delivery Method (ADM).

Principal Investigator:

Jiaqi Ma

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This project will provide research assistance in understanding how road pricing in general, and priced managed lanes in particular, could reduce transportation emissions in California. UTC’s research will identify and summarize different road pricing strategies; how priced managed lanes have been implemented and performed within California, the United States, and globally to address transportation, climate change, and equity issues; provide specific case studies on existing priced managed lanes within California; provide a methodology for prioritizing future projects for investment; and provide a methodology to evaluate future projects’ impact on California’s GHG emissions. UTC’s research will seek to determine how priced managed lanes could simultaneously address Caltrans’ broader transportation, climate, and equity goals as defined in the Caltrans Strategic Plan 2020-2024; and be the focus of successfully implementing equitable roadway pricing statewide.

Principal Investigators:

Adam Millard-Ball & Michael Manville

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We consider how cities are responding to California's legislation that preempts them from requiring parking close to transit. To what extent are cities sticking to the letter of the law? Which cities are going further and taking the opportunity to go beyond the scope of the state requirements? Or are some cities attempting to evade the spirit of the law?

Principal Investigator:

Juan Matute

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The past decade’s proliferation of payment methods and technologies has given transportation providers new and various ways to collect payments for trips, whether they are by bus, train, managed lane, or by road paid for by toll or mile. While the expansion of options has enabled faster transactions and more efficient boardings and toll payments, the plethora of payment systems means that users must juggle multiple cards, apps, and transponders since few of these systems are interoperable. Yet the worst consequence of the convoluted system is that many people are left behind — the millions of Americans who are unbanked or underbanked and/or who do not have access to smartphones or mobile internet.

Principal Investigator:

Madeline Brozen

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Most existing studies of wildfire evacuations focus on vehicle-owning households and assume that evacuees will use their personal vehicles while evacuating. However, no studies have collected near real-time data on transit riders’ evacuation behavior or their adaptation behavior immediately post-evacuation.

Principal Investigator:

Megan Mullin

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A race to rebuild transportation infrastructure may preclude or increase the cost of other community-defined priorities that could emerge during the long recovery process. Once roadway repairs and reconstruction are underway, it becomes more difficult to pursue alternative transportation pathways, such as building complete streets or designing grids for more effective evacuation. The task of rebuilding therefore requires a community engagement process that is broader in scope than what transportation agencies typically use to promote public participation in transportation decision making.

Principal Investigator:

Yeonsu Song

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The goal of this project is to review and synthesize existing research on the challenges faced by older adults with disabilities during and after wildfire evacuations. This includes an examination of transportation-related issues, which are often a significant barrier to safe and timely evacuations. Our aim is to identify gaps in the current literature, highlight areas of future research, and explore policy implications that can improve preparedness, evacuation, and resilience for this vulnerable population.

Principal Investigator:

Adam Millard-Ball

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We examine how developers respond to their new-found flexibility under California's AB 2097 parking reform law. To what extent do they propose reduced parking once freed from minimum requirements?

Principal Investigator:

Evelyn Blumenberg

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In the United States, research reveals that women tend to travel shorter distances and durations compared to men. They also often have more complex travel patterns as they balance work and household responsibilities. This distinct travel behavior creates mobility challenges that can limit women's access to resources and opportunities. Recently, several California transportation agencies have started efforts to gain a better understanding of women's travel needs.

Principal Investigator:

Brian D. Taylor

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Principal Investigator:

Jonathan Stewart

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Certain critical points in transportation networks, like interchange stations and tunnels crossing active faults, significantly impact the flow of people and commerce in urban areas. Loss of capacity at such points impacts the population and economy of the region, and the speed with which repairs are made affects how well cities can recover after major earthquakes. The Hayward Fault – located in the San Francisco Bay Area – is one of California’s most active faults, with the potential to generate a major earthquake, magnitude 7 or higher. Such an earthquake can induce substantial ground displacement, potentially disrupting the tunnels and the BART system.

Principal Investigator:

Brian D. Taylor

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While many aspects of life have largely returned to pre-pandemic patterns as the COVID-19 pandemic has become endemic, several aspects of travel remain unsettled and uncertain. In particular, the forced experiment of working from home for at least half of the labor force in 2020 is evolving into a new normal where perhaps a third of all workers split their work hours between office and home. This has had especially significant effects on public transit, which has traditionally carried a disproportionate share of commute trips, but these new work patterns have affected the timing and character of many other trips as well. These evolving patterns of travel may call into question many current transportation policies and plans that are premised on (now) outdated ideas about travel.