Subway or Monorail? LA Metro Weighs Options for Easing Congestion
LAist’s coverage of competing proposals to ease congestion in the Sepulveda Corridor features Jacob Wasserman of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. Wasserman explains the pros and cons of two alternatives under consideration by LA Metro: a monorail and a subway. Increased capacity for riders and shortened travel times are advantages of the subway, but some homeowners object to tunneling beneath their properties. A monorail would require little or no tunneling and lower the cost and duration of construction, but one potential disadvantage is noise and air pollution. Wasserman also speaks about the benefits to people who work and study at UCLA, which has “one of the biggest concentrations of jobs and, unique to the Westside, a big concentration of people without cars.” All of the subway proposals would have a stop at UCLA, while only one of the proposed monorail routes would stop directly on campus.
On the ‘Pernicious and Hidden’ Toll of Chronic Heat
V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), spoke to several media outlets about the dangers of rising temperatures as well as cross-sector efforts to make communities more resilient to extreme heat. In a Guardian piece about this summer’s brutal heat wave in the United States, Turner noted that “chronic heat exposure can affect people in really pernicious and hidden ways.” On Spectrum News 1, she reminded viewers that heat not only contributes to more deaths than all other weather-related disasters, it also touches every aspect of daily life, from prenatal health, children’s learning, losses in labor and stresses on the medical system. Turner also spoke with the Los Angeles Times and the podcast America Adapts about the work that will be done by the new federally funded Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities, to be housed at LCI. The center will be an “all-hands-on-deck approach to learn from existing efforts to prevent the worst consequences of extreme heat.”
Measuring the Impact of Guaranteed-Income Experiments
The Los Angeles Times spoke with Judith Perrigo of the UCLA Luskin Social Welfare faculty about the impact of trial programs that provide a guaranteed basic income to people struggling to afford rent, child care and other expenses. Perrigo is currently studying experimental programs in Los Angeles County and Pomona, with the goal of providing scientific evidence to policymakers considering incorporating direct cash payments into social safety net systems. Her research aims to determine who benefits most from such programs and how extra cash with no strings attached affects the financial security and well-being of families, particularly those with very young children. “We know that the brain is developing rapidly in those first few years. So just to think about the opportunities that every kid could have at that age — the investments that they can have, the time that they can have from their parents, because their parents have the opportunity to spend more time with them — it’s tremendous.”
Tilly on U.S. Wages and Job Creation
UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to CNBC in a story about the trend in real earnings — the net growth in worker’s wages after inflation — in the U.S. over the past year. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker in the private sector saw an increase in real hourly earnings from May 2023 to May 2024. “The last year of increases in real wages is a large and important step forward for working families,” said Tilly, who studies labor markets and public policies directed toward better jobs. Tilly also commented in a Spectrum News 1 story about U.S. job growth during the current presidential administration. “The economy started out in a hole due to the pandemic when President Biden assumed the presidency, and so part of the process was getting out of that hole,” he said. “That’s a lot of jobs to create.”
Brozen Discusses Traffic ‘Safety Crisis’ in Some L.A. Neighborhoods
In a recent newsletter distributed by the Los Angeles Times, UCLA Luskin’s Madeline Brozen says the lack of safety at an intersection where a 4-year-old was struck and killed in October 2019 “speaks to a lack of streamlined approach” by the city. Conditions in the predominantly non-white, low-income neighborhood of Koreatown where Alessa Fajardo died highlight the race- and class-based inequities of traffic violence. Black and brown residents are disproportionately killed in traffic collisions in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States. “In the last five years, one of every three traffic deaths in L.A. is a Black or Latino pedestrian, up from one in four in 2013-2017,” said Brozen, deputy director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, who cites a policy brief she co-authored this year. “This is a safety crisis and we need a city process that brings improvements to communities as quickly as possible and doesn’t spend more on settlements than infrastructure,” Brozen said.
Ripple Effects From NYC’s Pause on Congestion Pricing
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to indefinitely halt a long-awaited congestion pricing plan for Manhattan reverberated in cities across the country that had been closely watching the ambitious experiment in traffic management. Media outlets covering the impact called on Michael Manville, chair of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning and an expert on congestion pricing. “With a policy this controversial, it is always helpful if someone else goes first,” Manville told the New York Times. “Being able to say, ‘These guys did it and it worked out,’ seems like a small thing, but it’s much, much better than saying, ‘We’re going to stick our necks out over this untested policy.’” Manville also spoke to the Los Angeles Times about prospects that congestion pricing will take hold elsewhere. “Had New York moved forward, I think it would have opened up some breathing room for Los Angeles and San Francisco to take their fairly dormant proposals and rev them back up,” he said.
Mullin on How News Reporting Affects Local Infrastructure
Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to Susanne Whatley, host of “Morning Edition” on LAist 89.3, about a newly published study connecting local reporting to voter support for public works projects. Mullin, also a professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, is co-author of the study on how information content affects public response to news coverage of a local issue. Specifically, Mullin and co-author Andrew Trexler of Duke University focused on preventive spending on infrastructure maintenance and repair and its relationship with the character and depth of news reporting. Through the national survey, the researchers found that readers responded to more informative coverage. “There’s a lot of great research demonstrating the importance of political news for the health of our democracy and the negative impacts that have followed from the closure and consolidation of news outlets,” Mullin said.
Relaxing Traffic at LAX
Brian D. Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, commented in a Los Angeles Times story about traffic at Los Angeles International Airport and ongoing efforts to alleviate congestion in and around the world-famous travel destination. Since the airport became an international destination in 1949, L.A. County’s population has grown by millions, with ground transportation growing with increased flight travel. “Things that were perfectly reasonable in 1966 become problematic in 2024,” said Taylor, UCLA professor of urban planning and public policy. In addition to improvements including cell phone waiting lots and the LAXit lot designated for ride-hail services and taxis, billions of dollars have been allocated for projects to ease airport traffic. “They’ve done more and more over time to move the cars onto the outer part of the roadway and be able to move the shuttle buses more quickly,” Taylor said. But “the easiest default is to drive [to a parking structure] or even get dropped off.”
RV Life as an Affordable Housing Option
Urban Planning Professor Adam Millard-Ball spoke to Florida public media outlet WUFT about the growing number of people who live in RVs by choice or necessity. Housing research into the estimated 1 million Americans who live full-time in RVs has focused more on people pursuing a highly mobile and leisurely “Van Life” than on stationary, low-income residents, the article noted. “Some people like the nomadic existence, but for many people it’s the lesser of two evils,” Millard-Ball said. “It’s better than couch surfing or being in a tent.” Large urban centers can support this option by converting excess space on public roads and in parking lots into areas with access to basic utilities such as water hookups and garbage collection, where residents of campers and RVs can live legally. The average residential street is more than twice as wide as the functional minimum of 16 feet, Millard-Ball’s research shows, and some of that extra space could be used to accommodate housing.
New Protections for LGBTQ+ Youth in Foster Care
UCLA Luskin’s Bianca D.M. Wilson spoke to LGBTQ Nation about a federal policy enshrining new protections for children in foster care. The rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requires that state and tribal child welfare agencies provide safe and appropriate placements for LGBTQ+ children and youth, who are overrepresented in foster care and face high levels of bullying and harassment. “They experience threats to their well-being and mental health as well as increased risk of not ending up in permanent homes,” said Wilson, an associate professor of social welfare. “LGBTQ youth are more likely to age out of the system without [ever being placed] in a permanent home. So they not only experience hardship within the foster care system but the most difficult route out of it.” The federal rule cites several studies conducted by Wilson, whose research explores the relationships among culture, oppression and health.
On Involuntary Commitment and Informed Consent
A Wall Street Journal article about a Los Angeles lawyer’s slide into psychosis and homelessness called on Social Welfare Professor David Cohen for insights on effective paths of mental health care. The article described a conundrum for society: how to balance the rights of individuals who may not feel they need any help with a desire to protect their basic physical and mental health. California is one of a number of states that have expanded laws allowing involuntary commitment for reasons other than violence. But evidence that civil commitment helps people recover is lacking, and many doctors are too quick to use medication to subdue patients, Cohen said. “We try to deactivate people with antipsychotic drugs,” he said. “We’ve lost the art of trying to figure out how to tackle this with the person in front of us.” Cohen also spoke to the Wildflower Alliance about the professional and moral obligation to obtain informed consent from patients.
Lawsuits Throw Shade on L.A.’s Long-Awaited Bus Shelters
A Los Angeles Public Press article about the delayed installation of thousands of bus shelters and hundreds of shade structures throughout Los Angeles cited Jacob Wasserman of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at UCLA Luskin. Although approved by the Los Angeles City Council in 2022, the 3,000 bus shelters and 450 shade structures have been held up while a number of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuits are pending resolution. This type of delay is not unusual, according to Wasserman, a research program manager at ITS, noting that transportation projects such as new rail lines are often delayed by CEQA lawsuits. “It is often done by the vocal minority of people who don’t want a project — a housing development or a transit line. And I think it’s complicated,” he said. CEQA lawsuits are also a way for residents to challenge gentrification and displacement in their neighborhoods or force negotiation with developers, Wasserman pointed out.
Jumpstarting California’s Plan to Build Affordable Housing
UCLA Luskin’s Paavo Monkkonen and Aaron Barrall co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about what California can do to make real progress on its ambitious goal to increase the supply of affordable housing. Despite a raft of well-intentioned laws, executive actions and lawsuits, progress thus far has proved more symbolic than substantial, and certainly “insufficient to improve affordability and stem population losses driven by the high cost of living,” wrote Monkkonen, a professor of urban planning and public policy, and Barrall, a housing data analyst at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. The authors list specific land-use regulations and policies that must be toughened if the state is to meet its goals — including a crackdown on wealthy or recalcitrant enclaves that have stalled affordable housing developments. “While these cities dawdle, the region’s residents suffer the effects of the housing shortage: high rents, overcrowding, eviction and homelessness.”
Akee on Lack of Data on Financial Situation of Native Communities
Randall Akee, professor of public policy at UCLA Luskin, commented in a Marketplace report about a Federal Reserve annual survey that provides information about the financial situation of U.S. households. While the survey reports, overall, that a majority of respondents indicate they are doing “OK” financially, it provides no information about American Indians and Alaska Natives. The survey showed that racial and ethnic gaps persist, with Black and Hispanic respondents reporting lower levels of financial security compared to white and Asian American respondents. However, data on Native communities was not sufficient to compare rigorously with other groups. Akee said other measures track with what researchers know about lower average incomes, limited employment opportunities and poor credit access in many Native communities, but limitations such as small sample sizes can exclude up to 60% of respondents. “You have to be creative in thinking about, OK, the perfect data doesn’t exist. However, how can I get close to that?” Akee said.
Mukhija on Putting L.A.’s ‘Graffiti Towers’ to Good Use
Scripps News spoke to Urban Planning Professor Vinit Mukhija about the partially built high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles that were covered by floor after floor of graffiti earlier this year. The tagged buildings, part of a planned luxury complex abandoned years ago after funding dried up, stoked a national debate over development priorities, including how governments can put abandoned or vacant properties to good use. “The problem does seem to exist that there are too many hurdles for the local government to come in, acquire this project — not leave it empty, stalled for five years — and build something more socially beneficial out of it,” Mukhija said. “This should be an opportunity to make it into the kind of housing we want more than luxury housing. If there’s any housing we want more than luxury housing, it is affordable, non-market-rate housing.”
Using Technology to Make Public Transit Safer
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the possible use of facial recognition technology and fare gates on the LA Metro system following a recent fatal stabbing and other attacks taking place on public transportation. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board has asked Metro staff to explore various measures to increase security across the vast citywide system. Loukaitou-Sideris, distinguished professor of urban planning, noted that cities across the country are dealing with crime on public transit and trying to find ways to make transportation safer. Technologies like facial recognition may raise privacy concerns, she said, suggesting that the use of fare gates and Metro transit ambassadors could help. “Transit environments are really very open environments. Everybody can get in and enter, and if you try many of these measures, you put delays into the system,” she said. “The public is not going to like it. So it’s a dilemma.”
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