The COVID-19 public health emergency has drastically changed every aspect of California life, including reducing personal travel by as much as half in many regions. As a result, transportation revenues are plummeting because user fees produce a large share of resources needed to operate California’s transportation system. Research by the Mineta Transportation Institute used simple spreadsheet models to estimate the impact of different scenarios for economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic on state-generated transportation revenues.

The role and usage of public transit in America has changed much over the past century, past decade, and even past few months in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. This session of the UCLA Luskin Virtual Summit series brought faculty affiliated with the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies to discuss the evolution of transit and its implications for the weeks, months, and years ahead.