Projects

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

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:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

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.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

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 Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Youth in dense, central neighborhoods often walk to school and are likely to be impacted by unsafe streets with higher proportions of pedestrian-automobile crashes. Despite Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School programs, they remain disproportionately represented among traffic fatalities, which are the highest in a decade. For these youth, social danger influences their choice to frequent traffic-heavy streets, as these arterials are perceived safer for walking than the quieter, desolate residential streets. Youth’s urban paths are informed by “hot spots” (where crime and crash data indicate danger) as well as “safe spots” (where data indicate safety from crime and vehicular injury) which, when combined with youth perceptions, impact routes to and from school.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Personal safety concerns continue to be one of the most critical issues among transit riders and women and gender minorities in particular. These safety concerns stem from the experience of sexual harassment that people who identify as women face frequently. While harassment can be a common occurrence, the vast majority of these experiences go unreported to transit agencies, leaving agencies without information about the magnitude of this problem on their system. This project details work with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) in their efforts to understand and address this problem. The SFMTA, working with two UCLA graduate students, designed a survey that drew from previous survey efforts and was tailored to address their interests and needs. This project documents the process of developing and deploying the questionnaire, in an effort to help other agencies take the first steps to better understanding rider safety and harassment.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

California has a strong interest in reducing the externalities of vehicle travel. Parking policy offers one possible lever. When parking is abundant and free, theory and evidence both suggest that driving will be more attractive, and transit use less so. Taking steps to make free parking less prevalent, therefore, could nudge travel behavior in a more desirable direction. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, moreover, there is interest in the future of telework. Here too, parking could play a role, although its influence is more ambiguous a priori. This project draws on the 2010-2012 California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) to revisit the potential of parking policy to influence travel behavior.

Principal Investigators:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

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:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Frontline transit work can be satisfying and secure — but also stressful or unsafe. Many agencies across the state lacked transit operators in the wake of the pandemic, delaying service restoration. Interviews, wage data, and other sources demonstrate that these shortages were due to both compensation issues and longstanding issues of workforce safety, culture, and practices. Wages have stagnated over the past decade, though California operators earn more than their area’s median incomes, trucking employees, and comparable transit jobs in other states. Raises alone are necessary but not sufficient: pay is generally lower than necessary to attract and retain needed employees—and recent increases in pay and hardships in other aspects of the job point to the importance of factors beyond wages alone. Agencies, advocates, and unions will need to rethink and expand transit operations funding, raise wages, and implement a variety of reforms: reducing hiring hurdles, expanding outreach, making scheduling fairer, improving facilities and support offerings, removing enforcement duties from operators, and creating career pathways for advancement.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

The United States’ transportation workforce is currently at a skills deficit in key areas. New and innovative transportation technologies and approaches threaten to exacerbate this situation. Yet, transportation workers need more than skills to implement new technologies: they need the skills to critically determine which technologies are likely to support a thriving nation and under what conditions. Additionally, transportation workers need the skills to support non-technology-focused solutions to the nation’s transportation challenges, including cultural, political, and social change.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

This project for the California 100 initiative examines transportation in California: where we are today, how we got here, and where we might be headed. We begin with facts on travel and transportation systems in California today. We next explore the decades of public and private land development and transportation systems that have shaped the current state of play: today’s transportation problems stem, in significant part, from yesterday’s land use decisions. We then consider factors that have either recently come to the fore or are likely to emerge in the near future. We review possible context-specific reforms to reshape transportation in the state, in order to better manage vehicle travel and reduce chronic congestion, shift patterns of development to make them less car-dependent, and increase access for all. Finally, we summarize the findings from a diverse panel of transportation experts convened to explore the possibilities, pitfalls, and implications of four possible future transportation and land use scenarios for California.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

This project uses mixed methods to examine the systemic causes and consequences of the construction of Stockton, California’s Crosstown Freeway and of urban redevelopment for Asian Americans communities. In Stockton, state and local government implemented connected freeway and urban renewal programs. Xenophobia and racism placed Chinatown, Japantown, and Little Manila in their path. The choice of freeway route was racially biased. The neighborhood surrounding an unchosen route was predominantly white, whereas that of the chosen route was predominantly home to people of color. Freeway construction during the 1960s and 1970s directly displaced hundreds of people and housing units downtown—mainly people of color, particularly Asians. The communities most harmed were the Asian American enclaves, where the housing stock declined by about three quarters between 1960 and 1970. The losses were not only physical, as the freeway and redevelopment eviscerated once vibrant ethnic commercial hubs. Because of long-standing economic and political marginalization, Asian Americans were relatively powerless to prevent the destruction; nonetheless, they fought to build affordable housing for their people, protect and in some cases relocate cultural institutions, and support surviving ethnic businesses. In the long run, Stockton failed to revitalize its downtown, while destroying its cultural diversity.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

In recent decades, homelessness has become an increasingly major challenge in the U.S. Of the half million unhoused people in the U.S., many seek shelter in settings under the auspices of state departments of transportation (DOTs), such as freeways, underpasses, and rest areas. This project synthesizes existing literature and findings from interviews with staff from state DOTs, service providers, and organizations responding to homelessness. Homelessness represents a recognized and common challenge for DOTs, but the numbers and location of unhoused individuals in state transportation settings vary and fluctuate. As DOTs face jurisdictional, financial, and legal hurdles in responding, DOT staff employ both “push” and “pull” strategies, the most common of which is encampment removals. However, the effectiveness of such removals is limited. Other strategies include “defensive design” and, more proactively, establishing or partnering with low-barrier shelters, providing shelters and sanitation on DOT land, and coordinating rehousing and outreach efforts. The findings suggest that DOTs should acquire better data on homelessness on their lands, create a homelessness coordinating office, establish formal partnerships with nonprofits/service providers, and evaluate the necessity of encampment removals, through the development and utilization of prioritization criteria.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

This project reports on the recent past, present, and immediate future of public transit finance in California and Southern California in light of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the financial situation of transit operators in the state and the region appeared dire, with plummeting ridership and fares and rising subsidies and operating costs. However, the three enormous federal pandemic relief bills brought billions of dollars to California transit agencies and helped them weather the fiscal storm, until many of the state and local tax revenue sources on which the state’s transit agencies rely bounced back and more quickly than most forecasters initially predicted. Yet in 2023, many of the state’s transit systems are struggling operationally and financially. Ridership began eroding in the half-decade leading up to 2020. While the federal pandemic relief bills provided a critical lifeline to keep struggling transit systems afloat early on, these funds are running out. Meanwhile, operating costs have risen, ridership and fare revenues have only partially returned, and some transit systems face “fiscal cliffs,” where they will need substantial new infusions of funding, substantial cuts in costs and service, or some combination of the two. Against this backdrop, this project examines the current state of California transit finance: why ridership and fare revenues are down and their prospects for recovery; what lessons the successful federal relief bills provide; why commuter-oriented systems are struggling financially much more than those that primarily service transit-reliant riders; and what the financial managers at transit systems have done to cope with this turbulent time and how they see their future financial prospects.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

The racist legacy of freeways has come into stark focus in the past year. This research focuses on one specific impact of freeways: neighborhood severance. Freeways disrupt the neighborhood street grid, creating particular hardships for pedestrians who must take circuitous routes to access transit and to walk to stores, schools, and other destinations. The impacts of disconnected streets on walking and public health are well documented (e.g. Handy 2003; Marshall et al. 2014; Barrington-Leigh and Millard-Ball 2019). But the environmental justice dimension of connectivity has remained unexplored, as has the link between most academic studies of street connectivity and local planning efforts. The research team will test the hypothesis that, while freeways disrupt street networks everywhere, the severance effects are greatest in BIPOC communities. This injustice might arise if White residents have more political voice to advocate for a denser mesh of local streets that cross the freeway, or to cancel a freeway proposal altogether.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Growing public interest in fare-free transit demands an assessment of fare-free and/or reduced transit fare programs, particularly how these programs may benefit disadvantaged communities, both urban and rural. Fare policy equity entials decisions about the similarities and differences in treatment afforded to various constituent groups. It also involves decisions about the extent to which travelers are expected to pay for the costs of serving their travel demand. This is of particular concern with regard to low-income, largely non-White, travelers, who are both disproportionately likely to use transit and to be burdened by the monetary costs of transit use. Given the foregoing, there is rising popular and scholarly interest in making public transit systems “fare-free.” Accordingly, in this research we will carefully review and synthesize the current states of both the practice of and research literature on fare-free transit. We will focus our review on the various dimensions of equity raised by charging for transit fares, and how they have/are likely to play out with conversion to fare-free transit service.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

By the fall of 2020, most transit systems had recovered to about half of their pre-pandemic ridership, but transit’s recovery largely stalled there, even as rates of driving, walking, and biking have mostly recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Research has shown that the riders who left transit in the pandemic tended to be higher income, better educated, more likely white or Asian, and with access to private motor vehicles. Spatial patterns of ridership have shifted dramatically as well, with downtowns and other major job centers losing the most riders, and low-income neighborhoods retaining the most riders. In net, the level, timing, and direction of transit travel have changed dramatically.

Principal Investigator:

Funding Program:

Program Area(s):

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, about five percent of the U.S. labor force worked primarily from home. Between February and April of 2020, the share of the labor force working from home skyrocketed to well over 50 percent in response to public health orders to contain the pandemic. While no one expects the share of those working from home to stay at such high levels as the pandemic recedes, there is considerable debate among experts on just how many workers will return full-time to employment sites. This research will review the well-established and substantial pre-pandemic literature on working from home and travel as well as the nascent but rapidly growing literature on working from home and travel in the COVID-19 pandemic to offer insights on the future of home/work location choices, commuting, and transportation mode usage, likely through the presentation of plausible future location/travel scenarios and their policy implications.