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:

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:

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 Investigator:

Adam Millard-Ball

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Most of California’s success in reducing transportation emissions over the last 20 years can be attributed to improvements in vehicle efficiency and the adoption of lower-carbon fuels, particularly electricity. California must also reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in order to meet critical climate goals and to enjoy the many co-benefits of reduced driving, such as improved air quality, safety, and public health. Increasing active transportation and transit options are two key strategies that California regions are using to try to reduce VMT, but to date, these projects have not been able to significantly cut VMT.

Principal Investigator:

Aydogan Ozcan

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Evaluation of particulate matter (PM) due to transportation systems is of interest to public health professionals and policymakers in California and Southern California, specifically. Poor air quality can lead to short-term eye, throat, and nose irritations, as well as long-term cancers. While PM can be reduced through new regulations including bus-only lane projects, carpooling, and the adoption of clean air vehicles, there is a need for highly accurate, yet cost-effective sensors which can assess the efficacy of these improvements. UCLA will develop a field-portable computational imaging and deep-learning enhanced aerosol analysis device, termed c-Air, to characterize PM due to transportation systems. In addition to particle counting and sizing, UCLA will further enhance its system above the current gold standard by classifying particles based upon physical features and volatility using computational imaging and deep learning.

Principal Investigator:

Adam Millard-Ball

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We examine the potential for walking and cycling to expand at the worldwide scale, and quantify the climate and health benefits. Working with Google, we leverage Environmental Insights Explorer data on mode shares for more than 11,000 cities, and examine how factors such as bicycle infrastructure and population density affect mode shares in different contexts.

Principal Investigator:

Jiaqi Ma

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The project aims to present an in-depth understanding of the public EV charging infrastructure in the present and future transportation electrification for public agencies, such as SCAG. One contribution is to provide an integrated eTranSym tool, which can simulate the travel and charging behaviors of every EV user, assess disparities in charging infrastructure distribution among communities, and predict the future demand for public charging facilities. The eTranSym tool helps prioritize underserved communities and assists the spatial-varying investment of the public charging infrastructure.

Principal Investigators:

John Gahbauer & Susan Shaheen

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This project reports on changes and evolving operations in public transit during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a focus on transit ridership and transit service hours, this project first tracks where, how, and why transit supply and demand has changed. Since reaching an April 2020 nadir both nationally and in California, transit ridership has recovered slowly: as of July 2022, boardings were 61 percent and 56 percent of their respective national and California baselines. In California, service has been restored faster than riders have returned. This project next examines and showcases what established strategies for increasing transit ridership remain relevant in and post-pandemic.

Principal Investigator:

J.R. DeShazo

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Aviation is a difficult sector to decarbonize. The high energy and power requirements of flight make electrification challenging and low-carbon liquid fuels face their own technical and practical hurdles. While much of the attention on air transportation pertains to passenger travel, the relatively smaller air cargo industry faces similar challenges to decarbonization as the passenger airline industry. In the face of a difficult to decarbonize aviation sector, carbon savings may be realized by facilitating modal shifts from air transportation to less-polluting ground transportation where feasible. California’s effort to build a high-speed rail network for interregional travel in California is an example of such a strategy and features prominently in the state’s Scoping Plan as one pathway towards meeting 2050 GHG emissions reduction targets in the transportation sector. Luskin Center for Innovation researchers propose conducting an exhaustive search of the relevant peer reviewed and grey literature on studies that examine the economic and environmental effects of policies, programs, and projects aimed at shifting passenger and cargo movements from the air to the ground.

Principal Investigator:

Martin Wachs

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As the market share of zero-emissions hydrogen and electric vehicles increases in California, the motor vehicle fuel tax becomes less applicable as a user fee, and declining revenues could produce shortfalls for maintaining the transportation system. The authors of SB1 sought policy options to raise usage-based revenues from electric and zero-emissions transportation system users.This research was specified in SB1 as a study for the University of California at Davis. Professor Martin Wachs, an internationally-renowned transportation finance expert member of the SB 1077 Road User Charge Technical Advisory Committee, is assisting research at UC Davis with this study.

Principal Investigator:

Suzanne Paulson

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Principal Investigator:

Suzanne Paulson

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