UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

100 Lecture Series: Investing in Sidewalks and Streets with Jessica Meaney
2026-02-18 10:30 - 11:45 (America/Los_Angeles) | Live Stream
Perloff Lecture Series on 100 Years of Transportation Research
Presented by UCLA Urban Planning and UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies
Investing in Sidewalks and Streets
Jessica Meaney is the Executive Director of Investing in Place. Investing in Place imagines a Los Angeles that cares for its sidewalks, streets, and parks as everyday expressions of dignity, equity, and belonging. Public spaces are planned and maintained as the foundation of community life, where investment and care reach every neighborhood.
Jessica has professional experience in Los Angeles, spanning transportation planning for safe streets, administration of philanthropic grants, and management of mission-driven organizations.
JESSICA MEANEY is the founder and executive director of Investing in Place, a leading voice for reimagining Los Angeles’ public realm—sidewalks, streets, and infrastructure. For two decades, Jessica has led efforts in LA to promote inclusive decision-making and equitable resource allocation in public works and transportation funding to create accessible and well maintained public spaces that enhance quality of life.

Get AICP Credits for this event:
Claim AICP Credits Here

Pacific Coast Transportation Workshop
2026-02-20 - 2026-02-21 | UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, 337 Charles E Young Drive E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies is delighted to announce the inaugural Pacific Coast Transportation Workshop on policy and planning.
Join us in Los Angeles from Friday February 20 to Saturday February 21, 2026. We look forward to discussing research and exchanging ideas in a small, relaxed setting.
RegisterDraft ProgramDraft ScheduleQuestions and Answers
Why are you holding this workshop? We aim to provide a low-cost forum that fosters deeper connections between transportation scholars and that stimulates new ideas. The program will focus on a smaller number of thought-provoking papers and reserve ample time for discussion. We will have a mix of full-length presentations with discussants, and brief “egg timer” talks.
Who can attend? The workshop is aimed at faculty, postdocs, PhD students, and other researchers working in the broad areas of transportation policy and planning. We particularly encourage scholars in western North America to attend.
How can I register? Registration will open in December for presenters and others on a first-come, first-served basis. A registration fee of $75 ($40 for students) will cover lunches on Friday and Saturday and other light refreshments.
Where can I stay? We have reserved a block of rooms at the Inn at UCLA, which is across the street from the workshop location in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. The cost is $229/night, including tax and breakfast. This rate is highly competitive for the area.
How could I have submitted a paper? We requested an extended abstract of up to 1,000 words by 5pm Pacific Time on Friday November 14, 2025. Abstracts should follow a three-part structure: questions, methods, results. We invite unpublished empirical and theoretical papers on any topic, using any research method, related to transportation policy and planning. There is a maximum of one submission per presenting author.
What are the criteria for review? Abstracts will be reviewed against the following criteria:

Question: Is the research question important and interesting, and within the broad scope of transportation policy and planning?
Methods: Do the authors have a way to answer that question?
Results: Do results exist already, or is there a credible plan to have results by the workshop date?

When will I find out about my paper? We aim to make decisions by mid-December.
Who is organizing the workshop? The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, with support from a steering committee: Jesus Barajas (UC Davis), Marlon Boarnet (USC), Anne Brown (University of Oregon), Michael Manville (UCLA), Juan Matute (UCLA), Adam Millard-Ball (UCLA), and Deborah Salon (ASU).
Where will the workshop be held? We will be hosted by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
How can I find out more? Email the team at uclaits@ucla.edu.

The Road to Repair: Transforming Infrastructure to Advance Environmental Justice
2026-03-02 10:00 - 12:30 | Virtual Event
A mini-symposium from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies The automobile-dominated transportation system has historically and disproportionately harmed low-income communities and communities of color, dividing neighborhoods, increasing exposure to traffic and noise pollution, and contributing to long-term health and economic disparities. This virtual mini-symposium explores how innovative, justice-focused approaches to freeway removal can repair these harms, reconnect communities, and create more equitable and sustainable urban environments, issues highly relevant to transportation planning, policy, and engineering. The mini-symposium features two panels:
Panel 1: Impacts and Inequities of Freeway Construction
This panel examines the social, environmental, and health impacts of freeway construction, with a focus on racial-ethnic disparities in exposure to traffic-related air pollution, displacement, and community severance. Panelists will discuss how transportation planning and infrastructure policies have marginalized communities of color and created persistent inequities.

Adam Paul Susaneck, AECOM/Segregation By Design
Demetria Murphy, Estolano Advisors
Amy Castaneda, Environmental Health Coalition
Dilia Ortega, Communities for a Better Environment

Panel 2: Solutions and Opportunities in Freeway Removal
The second panel explores innovative strategies to reimagine urban transportation. Panelists will discuss freeway removal, boulevard replacement, and investments in public transit and active transportation as tools to reconnect communities, reduce environmental harm, and promote transportation equity. Case studies, including California examples, will highlight planning, policy, and design strategies to advance environmental justice.

Dr. Ben Crowther, America Walks
Randolph Belle, Outreach Lead for Vision 980
Yesenia Perez, Senior Program Manager for Climate Equity, The Greenlining Institute

Why Attend
Attendees will gain insights into both the systemic challenges posed by freeway construction and the transformative potential of equity-driven transportation planning that prioritizes equity, environmental justice, and community well-being. The mini-symposium is designed to foster dialogue between researchers, students, and policymakers on practical and innovative solutions for more just and sustainable transportation systems.
REGISTER HERESpeakers

Randolph BelleExecutive Director at EVOAK!

Randolph Belle is the founder of EVOAK!, a nonprofit advancing creative placemaking and equitable community development. He is also co-founder and partner of Creative Development Partners and founder of RBA Creative, a business development center for the arts. With 30+ years as an Oakland and San Francisco-based artist and social impact leader, he champions “community benefit by design.” His work includes harm repair initiatives addressing displacement from urban renewal, including Vision 980, a Reconnecting Communities Project. He also leads environmental justice and Black cultural research efforts.

Amy CastañedaAssociate Director of Policy at the Environmental Health Coalition

As a product of the South Bay in San Diego County, Amy Castañeda is passionate about uplifting the issues that disproportionately impact underserved communities. Through her work, she is committed to continuing to build the next generation of community organizers.Amy studied Public Policy & Public Health at Arizona State University. Through her work as a community organizer, Amy has worked on various local, state, and federal political campaigns. Before joining Environmental Health Coalition, Amy worked for the First Supervisorial District at the County of San Diego where she served as a policy advisor & small business liaison overseeing issues related to homelessness, public safety, small business stimulus grant, behavioral health and reproductive health. Amy also served as Campaign Manager for a state assembly race in her hometown. She is an experienced campaign manager that focuses on leveraging a grassroots strategy to consistently garner the support of labor organizations, and environmental justice organizations. Prior to her role as campaign manager, Amy was a community organizer at Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest where she helped bridge the need for reproductive health in the South Bay community and established the first-ever Planned Parenthood Generation Action club in two South Bay high schools.

On her free time Amy likes to travel, go on hikes, bake, and spend time with her dog Mariposa.

Demetria M. MurphySenior Associate at Estolano Advisors and Steward at a.l.t. ^homela

Demetria M. Murphy is an equity architect, researcher, organizational strategist, and facilitator who seeks to build power with those divested and disenfranchised and leverage the reparative potential of public lands, funding, and infrastructure, centering an ethic of care. As a Senior Associate at Estolano Advisors, Demetria led the team’s development of the Restorative Justice Framework for the City of Pasadena that will guide a new Master Plan/Specific Plan to reconnect communities surrounding a portion of land formerly in the SR-710 “ditch,” addressing the legacy impacts of car-centric planning, racist ideologies and its displacement of thousands of residents and their descendants and envisioning new possibilities for this site. Demetria is a steward at a.l.t. ^homela, a creative residency, cultural archive, and community gathering space in Westmont /Athens / Harbor Gateway North, leading the South Menlo Avenue Community Mapping Project and a board member at Power California. Demetria holds a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA.

Dilia OrtegaSouthern California Programs Co-Director

Dilia Ortega is the Southern California Programs Co-Director at Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), where she advances environmental justice and equitable transportation outcomes. Raised in Southeast Los Angeles, she brings a lived understanding of industrial pollution shaped by her family’s work and proximity to the City of Vernon. She spent seven years at CBE as a Community Organizer, leading park equity efforts and the campaign to stop the I-710 South freeway widening. She holds a BA in History from Williams College and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA.

Yesenia PerezClimate Equity Senior Program Manager at The Greenlining Institute

Yesenia Perez is a policy advocate and Senior Program Manager for Climate Equity focused on systems change in climate resilience and clean mobility. She works with public agencies and community partners to shift how climate and infrastructure policies are designed, funded, and implemented to better serve communities of color. Her background spans strategic consulting, environmental education, and climate equity research. She holds a B.S. in Global Environmental Policy from UC Berkeley.

Adam Paul SusaneckFounder/Director at Segregation by Design: An Atlas of Spatial Injustice

Adam Paul Susaneck is an architect and urban planner researching how transportation and housing policy have been used as instruments of physical division within urban areas, and how we can reconnect communities divided by the infrastructure choices of the past. His project, Segregation by Design, aims to catalog the destruction caused by mid-century urban renewal and highway projects, and to highlight the work advocates are doing to heal the divide. Adam is a Project Manager at AECOM working on transportation projects both in the Benelux and in the Northeast US and is pursuing his PhD in urban planning at the Delft Institute of Technology in the Netherlands.

100 Lecture Series: Improving L.A.'s Transportation Policy Outcomes with Joshua Schank
2026-03-11 10:30 - 11:45 | Live Stream
Perloff Lecture Series on 100 Years of Transportation Research
Presented by UCLA Urban Planning and UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies
Improving L.A.’s Transportation Policy Outcomes
Joshua Schank speaks from his book, “New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies,” which tells the inside story of how a small team at LA Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation turned big ideas into real change. It is part playbook, part survival guide, and part reality check for anyone trying to make progress inside public institutions.
JOSHUA SCHANK is a Partner at InfraStrategies LLC, where he leads a practice focused on innovation, strategic planning, and technology. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Transportation Studies at UCLA, and a Research Associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute. Prior to joining InfraStrategies and UCLA, Dr. Schank was the first-ever Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) at LA Metro. Dr. Schank previously served as President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, Director of Transportation Research for the Bipartisan Policy Center, and Transportation Policy Advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). He is the co-author of All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight Over Highway Funding.

Get AICP Credits for this event:
Claim AICP Credits Here

Celebration of 100 Years of Transportation Research and Education at UCLA
2026-05-04 | Covel Commons – Grand Horizon Room, 330 DeNeve Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
UCLA has been a leader in transportation research and education for more than a century. Over the past 100 years, transportation research at UCLA has shaped the field, from the earliest traffic studies to the emerging mobility technologies of today. As our world and transportation systems continue to evolve, we look forward to another 100 years in motion.
Join us on May 4 to celebrate UCLA’s long history of transportation research and education. More details to come.
