UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

Utility of Travel
2014-10-09
What Good is it? Reflections on the Utility of Travel in a Resource-Constrained Era
Martin Wachs Lecture || October 9, 2014 || UCLA
Presented by: Patricia Mokhtarian, Georgia Tech University
UCLA hosted the 8th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture where Patricia Mokhtarian, faculty at Georgia Tech, lamented that travel is now viewed primarily as a “derived demand” : travel occurs only so that people can enjoy the goods and experiences attained at their destination but not because the journey in and of itself brings enjoyment. Mokhtarian described how the view of travel among transportation officials in early 21st century has come to feel largely negative. And so, she made clear from the beginning that her aim was to restore balance to how we conceive of travel by placing travel into the category of behaviors that have a dual nature: those that have on the one hand a utilitarian (functional) aspect, yet also bring a hedonic (pleasing) dimension. As she explained to the audience, travel in this positive sense can be viewed as similar to the act of eating: just as eating food can bring with it a pleasure that has little to do with nutritional sustenance, travel can bring a positive feeling unrelated to one’s ultimate destination.
Read more about this event here.

Wachs Lecture: Edward Glaeser
2013-03-01
Transportation Lecture with Edward Glaeser
Martin Wachs Lecture || March 1, 2013 || UC Berkeley
Presented by: Edward Glaeser, Harvard Kennedy School
Edward Glaeser is currently the Fred and Eleanor Gimp Professor of Economics at Harvard Kennedy School. He also serves as the director of both the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. Glaeser is also the author and co-author of over forty publications, including online and print material. At Harvard he teaches urban and social economics and microeconomic theory. His work focuses on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission.

What About Time in Transportation and Health Research?
2012-05-10
What About Time in Transportation and Health Research?
Martin Wachs Lecture || May 10, 2012 || UCLA
Presented by: Mei-Po Kwan, The Ohio State University
The 6th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture featured Mei-Po Kwan, now Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Systems at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. In her lecture, the audience learned how transportation researchers have long recognized the role of time in influencing activity-travel behavior. In previous studies, time has been treated largely as a linear reference system for registering when events happen, or as a dimension for assessing how phenomena change over time and space. This presentation examined a different notion of time and its implications for transportation and health research, revisiting some fundamental concepts like distance, accessibility, and geographic context, while exploring new conceptualizations that take time into account. It suggests that time is at least as important as space for understanding how individuals of different social groups experience access to facilities and exposure to contextual or environmental influences. The lecture offers that a temporally integrated perspective would help shed new light on many issues transportation and health researchers have been examining for decades.
The full recording can be found here.

What’s Wrong with U.S. Public Transit Policy?
2011-02-01
What’s Wrong with U.S. Public Transit Policy?
Martin Wachs Lecture || February 3, 2011 || UC Berkeley
Presented by: Genevieve Giuliano, USC
Berkeley hosted the 5th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture where Genevieve Giuliano, faculty at the University of Southern California, examined outcomes of four decades of transit policy. Using two examples, mobility for the disadvantaged and transit impacts on land use, Giuliano showed the audience that little progress is being made in achieving transit’s objectives. Yet, as she demonstrated, public transit continues to receive strong public support, and subsidies continue to grow. Major barriers to achieving public transit’s urban planning objectives she discussed included investment and service decisions that generate public support. Evidently, effective U.S Public Transit Policy will compromise the public want with the desired technical objectives.
Read more about this event here.

Equity, Pricing, and Surface Transportation Politics
2010-04-08
Equity, Pricing, and Surface Transportation Politics
Martin Wachs Lecture || April 8, 2010 || UCLA
Presented by: Alan Altshuler, Harvard University
The 4th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture by Alan Altshuler, professor of urban policy and planning in the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, examined the new debates about funding for surface transportation, and posed to the audience the question of how managing road congestion will occur in an era when major capacity expansion is rarely feasible. He described how these debates are also routinely framed around conceptions of equity and sought to explain the distinctive nature of equity debates in U.S surface transportation, with particular attention to congestion pricing and High Occupancy Toll Lanes.
Read more about this event here.

Gender and Mobility
2008-03-01
Gender and Mobility: A Feminist Geographer’s Perspective
Martin Wachs Lecture || March 1, 2008 || UC Berkeley
Presented by: Susan Hanson, Clark University
In the 3rd annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture, Susan Hanson, professor emerita of geography at Clark University, tackled the complex issues surrounding gender and mobility. Lending her perspective to this conversation, Hanson emphasized how feminists have long known that gender and mobility are inseparable, influencing each other in profound and often subtle ways. In her talk, she discussed that tackling these complex societal problems will require improved understandings of the relationships between gender and mobility. Hanson illuminated the gaps in scholarship, as we saw how work on how mobility shapes gender has emphasized gender, to the neglect of mobility, whereas research on how gender shapes mobility has dealt with mobility in great detail and paid much less attention to gender.

Keeping the City
2007-03-01
Keeping the City: A 40-Year Quest for Sustainable Urban Transport
Martin Wachs Lecture || March 1, 2007 || UCLA
Presented by: Anthony May, Leeds University
In November 2007, the 2nd annual Wachs Lecture, and the first held at UCLA, was delivered by Anthony May, professor at Leeds University. In his lecture, May explored the history and future of efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of transportation systems and increase their contributions to the sustainability and livability of cities, drawing on his decades of research in the United Kingdom. His lecture was followed by a commentary by Gail Goldberg, then planning director of the City of Los Angeles.

Why the Worst Megaprojects Get Built
2006-10-17
Why the Worst Megaprojects Get Built and How Better Policy and Planning Can Stop It
Martin Wachs Lecture ||October 17, 2006 || UC Berkeley
Presented by: Bent Flyvbjerg, Aalborg University
The inaugural Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture was held on October 17, 2006 with Bent Flyvbjerg, professor of planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and a former Wachs doctoral student, told a packed auditorium of current and future transportation, urban and regional planners the bad news about megaprojects. The lecture discussed the tendency of these projects to go over budget, with nine out of 10 estimated to incur cost overruns. As the audience learned, demand for particular megaprojects are also significantly overestimated, while their budgets greatly exceed initial estimates, creating a costly, underutilized project. Flyvbjerg left the audience to consider how this overoptimism and overcomplexity should be addressed through policy.
