Projects

Principal Investigator:

Madeline Brozen

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Mobility wallets are a relatively new approach to addressing financial barriers to travel among transport-disadvantaged communities. Individuals are provided with funds to pay for a range of mobility options, including transit and shared modes, at their discretion.

Los Angeles’s Universal Basic Mobility Pilot will include at least 5,000 participants from the social justice community of South LA and monthly stipends that range from $24 to $150 loaded onto the local transit TAP card. The transit agency (LA Metro) has recruited local electric carshare, ride-hail, bikeshare, and scootershare programs to accept the TAP card as payment.

Principal Investigator:

Adam Millard-Ball

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California has increasingly turned to place-based, community-driven programs such as Transformative Climate Communities (TCC), the Community Air Protection Program (CAPP), and Regional Climate Collaboratives (RCC) to address the twin priorities of climate change and environmental justice. Transportation improvements are at the heart of these cross-sectoral programs because of their potential to mitigate air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and inequities in access to transportation. In this synthesis, we ask how place-based climate action efforts are being evaluated, and what insights from the broader policy and plan evaluation research literature might inform evaluation design.

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:

Evelyn Blumenberg

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Community college students spend more on transportation than their counterparts at public and private four-year colleges, partly due to the lack of on-campus or nearby affordable housing. Recent research highlights how transportation challenges are an overlooked but basic need for community college students.

Principal Investigator:

Brian D. Taylor

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Principal Investigator:

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

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New transportation networks facilitate mobility and may also spur economic development. Over the past decades, a new transportation technology -- high-speed rail (HSR) -- has brought a profound impact on urban-regional accessibility and intercity travel across Europe and East and South-East Asia. But the economic and spatial impacts of HSR have been varied and are largely contingent on a variety of factors, as well as local planning and policy. As California is in the process of building its own HSR network, it is important to review the experience of established HSR networks abroad and understand the possible economic effects that HSR can bring to regional and local economies, and their prerequisites. While the impacts of California’s plan on the direct creation of jobs in local markets (e.g., construction sector) and on the travel sector (e.g., forecasts for HSR travel demand) have been investigated, the possible indirect impacts (e.g., on land values, tourism, firm location, and local and regional development) have not gathered enough attention. This research proposal attempts to fill this gap.

Principal Investigator:

Evelyn Blumenberg

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The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the necessity of childcare as essential infrastructure. Without access to affordable childcare, working outside of the home is difficult or, in many cases, impossible. The need for child care is particularly pressing for mothers who continue to bear disproportionate responsibility for the care of their children. Childcare is in short supply and access to child care varies across neighborhoods by income, race, and ethnicity. Given the critical importance of childcare access to women’s ability to work, the research team will study child care-related travel in California, a topic that has received relatively little study. The researchers are particularly interested in testing whether geographic disparities in access to child care are associated with the distance that parents travel to child care centers.

Principal Investigator:

Paul M. Ong

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A somber statistic in STEM fields is that underrepresented racial and ethnic groups are less likely than those from well-represented backgrounds to self-report high interest in biomedical faculty careers at research-intensive universities. Hypercompetition in neuroscience careers both at the Ph.D. and post-doctoral levels is predicted to result in increased racial and ethnic disparities in this field. African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans complete undergraduate STEM degrees at approximately 2 to 3% nationally, yet there is evidence that this can be greatly increased with quality social support and mentoring in these groups.We present key approaches in this application that are aimed at enhancing the inclusive excellence of our NSIDP and develop long-lasting ties with our HBCU partners. The key approaches to increase the impact on students and faculty at both HBCU partner institutions and UCLA are to: 1) engage in active research and teaching partnerships that accompany students before and beyond the 8-week internship at UCLA; and 2) to incentivize quality mentorship of the interns in our UCLA host labs, increasing the impact on students and faculty at both HBCU partner institutions and UCLA.

Principal Investigator:

Juan Matute

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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:

Carole Turley Voulgaris

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Principal Investigator:

Anne Brown

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Principal Investigator:

Evelyn Blumenberg

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This study examined the equity implications of supercommuting in California, with a focus on the Los Angeles region (comprised of Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties). We analyzed equity in terms of the housing and transportation expenditure burdens borne by supercommuters.

Principal Investigator:

Cecile Gaulbert

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This project uses the California High Speed Rail (CHSR) project as a case study for analyzing the relative importance of economic versus political/ideological factors in shaping preferences for large transportation projects among voters and policymakers.

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:

Tierra Bills

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While much attention in the literature has focused on wildfire evacuation disparities tied to transportation and communications infrastructure and policy needs, limited focus has been on the transportation- and infrastructure-related needs to support recovery and resilience from wildfire events, and for vulnerable communities.

Principal Investigator:

Paul M. Ong

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This study documents the historical and current patterns of racial/ethnic residential segregation in Pasadena, examining the role of freeways and other mechanisms in shaping these outcomes. Pasadena and the wider Los Angeles County have become more racially diverse over time. Despite these broader changes, neighborhoods along the built and unbuilt freeway corridor have grown increasingly segregated and economically polarized. From 1960 to 1970, tracts affected by freeway construction lost almost 1,800 units of housing (-28%), while the city overall and the South tract, not directly impacted by freeway construction, experienced steady growth. Home values, rents, and income generally fell north of SR-710 but rose around it and south of it. Pasadena mirrored national trends in housing discrimination, including redlining, racially restrictive covenants, school integration resistance, and anti-integration ballot measures. In the face of these barriers, residents of color successfully organized protests and pursued legal remedies. Urban renewal projects, particularly around the SR-710 stub, disproportionately displaced communities of color under the guise of eliminating urban blight. Freeway development in Pasadena left a lasting legacy of environmental and social inequality.

Principal Investigator:

Jacob L. Wasserman

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This research project aimed to develop a guide of suggested practices for responding to, managing, and deterring encampments on the right-of-way. The suggested practices will address the challenges for state departments of transportation in the design, construction, and maintenance of pavements and consider social equity, environmental impacts, safety, legal issues, coordination with other agencies, and other relevant issues. The project's interim report documents the research approach; present findings and analysis from the literature review, industry scan, and two surveys; and identifying existing and new practices.

Principal Investigator:

Gregory Pierce

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California’s goal of transitioning all vehicles sold in the state to zero-emission models by 2035 is pivotal to address climate change and advance environmental justice. However, achieving this transition equitably requires targeted efforts to address the financial and social barriers that low-income and disadvantaged communities face.

Principal Investigator:

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

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This project examines the consequences of freeway construction on neighborhoods of color across California: South Colton, West Fresno, and City Heights in San Diego. The construction of freeways was a contributing mechanism to the perpetuation of racial inequality, weakening social institutions, disrupting local economies, and physically dividing neighborhoods. In South Colton, a freeway was ultimately not built through its community of color, though largely for reasons of construction costs. City Heights, initially a predominantly non-Hispanic white neighborhood, underwent a demographic transformation driven by white flight during a decades-long pause in freeway construction. West Fresno did face consequences from freeway development but was also unique in its diversity of residents pre-freeway, including people of color and non-Hispanic white immigrant communities. Freeway development contributed to transforming West Fresno into an overwhelming community of color. Across these cases, freeways fragmented communities, displaced residents, and reinforced pre-existing racial divides. These racialized impacts stemmed from systemic socioeconomic marginalization and exclusion of people of color in the planning process.