Archive for: Brian D. Taylor

Taylor on Why Traffic Is Getting Worse

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UCLA Luskin’s Brian Taylor spoke to LAist’s AirTalk about traffic congestion that in some places has equaled or surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

Personal travel has waned, but delivery trucks and other commercial transportation have increased. And hybrid work schedules have added unpredictability to rush-hour traffic patterns.

Taylor shared the counterintuitive fact that Angelenos actually drive fewer vehicle miles per capita than most motorists in the nation’s 70 largest urbanized areas.

Southern California has a moderate level of density over a very big area, he explained. While the region is much denser than areas such as Memphis, Dallas or Kansas City, it is not dense enough to be walkable and transit-focused like San Francisco, New York and Boston.

“We actually have modest levels of driving but a very large number of people on a relatively limited road system, and that results in high levels of congestion,” said Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy.

In a megalopolis as enormous as the LA region, “there’s traffic because there’s 18 and a half million people who are trying to move around along with lots of goods.”

Taylor on the Growth of L.A.’s Transportation Infrastructure

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Brian D. Taylor, Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy and a Research Fellow in the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, was a guest on The Climate Dispatch, a podcast launched by the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter. Episode 5 focused on how Los Angeles became the car-dependent city it is today as well as how the city could be better planned and built to serve people and promote a healthier environment. Taylor explained how cities, like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York grew at various stages in their transportation evolution, often developing around the primary means of getting around, from foot traffic to trains and automobiles. “As we started to move out and use public transit, the city started to move out as well and grow. Rail transit often caused cities to develop in sort of a starfish pattern,” he said. “And then, as the automobile became the dominant mode, we saw more sprawling lower density development.”

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America Is Becoming a Nation of Homebodies

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UCLA Luskin and Clemson University scholars authored an article in The Conversation about their recent research showing that Americans are spending more and more time at home — a trend seen not just since the COVID-19 era but for most of this century. On the whole, Americans are spending nearly 1.5 hours less outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003, write UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Brian D. Taylor, PhD student Sam Speroni of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and Clemson University Professor Eric A. Morris, who earned his master’s and doctorate of urban planning at UCLA Luskin. This has major implications for traffic, public transit, real estate, the workplace, socializing and mental health. “Because hunkering down appears to be the new norm, we think it’s all the more important for policymakers and everyday people to find ways to cultivate connections and community in the shrinking time they do spend outside of the home,” they write. The research has been highlighted in several media outlets, including Perspective Living magazine.

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A Post-COVID Change in How We Live Our Lives

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Media outlets in the United States and around the world have spotlighted new research showing that Americans are spending more time at home since the COVID-19 pandemic. The study by Brian D. Taylor and Sam Speroni of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and Eric A. Morris of Clemson University reveals an overall drop since 2019 of about 51 minutes a day in time spent on out-of-home activities and an almost 12-minute reduction in time spent on daily travel such as driving or taking public transportation. The authors conclude that the trend calls for a rethinking of many planning policies, including repurposing office and retail real estate given the increase in working and shopping from home. News media including Health, Earth.com, Consumer Affairs, ZME Science, Manchester Evening News and National Geographic Germany are among the more than 400 outlets covering the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Planning Association.

 

Not Going Out Is the ‘New Normal’ Post-Covid, Study Finds Responses from 34,000 people reveal a decline in out-of-home activities, according to a new study by UCLA and Clemson researchers

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Compared with just before the COVID-19 pandemic, people are spending nearly an hour less a day doing activities outside the home, behavior that researchers say is a lasting consequence of the pandemic.

A new study by Brian D. Taylor and Sam Speroni of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) and Eric A. Morris of Clemson University reveals an overall drop since 2019 of about 51 minutes a day in time spent on out-of-home activities and an almost 12-minute reduction in time spent on daily travel such as driving or taking public transportation.

Published today in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the study found that this shift toward “going nowhere fast” promises to affect people and society on many levels, from psychology to sociology to economics.

The authors call for a rethinking of many planning and transportation policies. Their recommendations include repurposing office and retail real estate given the increase in working and shopping from home. Restrictions on converting commercial buildings to housing should also be relaxed and curb space for delivery vehicles increased given the rise in online shopping, they argue.

The researchers assessed the years before, during and after the pandemic, namely 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The year 2020 was excluded in part because data gathering was halted at the height of the outbreak. The study examined the work and leisure habits of 34,000 Americans ages 17 and over using data from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the United States Census Bureau and sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The authors all have ties to UCLA Luskin Urban Planning: Taylor, professor and former director of ITS, earned his PhD in 1992; Morris earned his master’s in 2004 and PhD in 2011; Speroni earned his master’s in 2020 and is currently a doctoral student.

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LAX’s Long-Awaited Rail Connection

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UCLA Luskin’s Brian D. Taylor and Zev Yaroslavsky commented in a Los Angeles Times story on L.A.’s long-awaited rail connection to Los Angeles International Airport. A link to the region’s famous air transportation hub, while contemplated for decades, has faced a number of obstacles. “To not have public transportation at one of the busiest airports in the world … is a major faux pas,” said Yaroslavsky, the longtime county and city official who now directs the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin. The project is now set to open in 2026, with an Automated People Mover connecting LAX to the Metro rail system. The 2.25-mile system also is expected to reduce traffic at the airport. “When the trains are essentially running every couple of minutes, that tends to reduce the transfer burden,” said Taylor, professor of urban planning and public policy, and research fellow in the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin.

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Taylor on Cutting Transit Service

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Brian D. Taylor, professor of urban planning and public policy and a research fellow at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Marketplace about what transit agencies are doing as federal aid provided during the pandemic is running out. Federal aid helped agencies — including those that lost ridership — during the last few years, but now those agencies are having to consider cuts on some routes. A good transit system that attracts ridership requires reliable and frequent service, Taylor said. “You need to have a network of service that reasonably covers an entire urban area,” he said, explaining that some parts of the system will make money while others with less ridership won’t. “But those who are there need to get to destinations, to get to work on time, to get to the doctor, to get to things that they need to get to,” Taylor said.

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Leadership Transition at UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies After more than two decades guiding research center's growth, Brian Taylor hands reins to Adam Millard-Ball

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After 23 years at the helm, Brian D. Taylor has stepped down as director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, effective July 1. His successor is Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin.

Taylor has led UCLA ITS since 2001, playing a critical role in its expansion. Under his tenure, the institute has transformed from a small operation with limited staff and resources into a nationally influential research center with more than 75 scholars and staff conducting cutting-edge research in eight program areas. It has also established partnerships in several consortia, most recently being named the lead in a five-year, $7.5 million federally funded Center of Excellence on New Mobility and Automated Vehicles.

“I am honored to have collaborated with so many talented and motivated students, staff and faculty in building the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies into the productive and influential transportation research center it is today,” Taylor said. “And I am confident that the institute will continue to effectively tackle our most pressing environmental, equity and technological transportation challenges in the years ahead.”

In recent years, UCLA ITS has

  • Joined the ITS branches at Berkeley, Davis and Irvine in 2016 to form a four-campus University of California Institute of Transportation Studies consortium;
  • Significantly expanded its California-focused transportation policy research in 2017 due to substantially increased annual state funding through the Road Repair and Accountability Act (SB 1);
  • Supported five graduate transportation degree programs in three UCLA Luskin academic departments that have recently climbed in their most widely recognized national rankings — Civil & Environmental Engineering (#12), Public Policy (#14) and Urban Planning (#1);
  • Supported the recruitment of three transportation engineering faculty since 2020 and the creation of master’s and doctoral degrees in transportation engineering.
  • Directed more than $3 million in funding to support graduate students;
  • Supported more than 20 former transportation students who have moved on to tenured or tenure-track faculty positions at leading universities around the world, including Harvard, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and University of Virginia;
  • Broadened research focus areas to include access to opportunities, the environment, new mobility, parking, public transit, traffic, transportation & communities, and transportation finance.
Taylor’s Leadership Roles

Taylor worked professionally as a transportation planner/analyst for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission before pursuing a PhD in urban planning under the mentorship of Martin Wachs at UCLA. Taylor’s academic focus on transportation finance and governance made him a natural fit for policy engagement.

He began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1994, Taylor joined the UCLA faculty, one year after Wachs re-established the institute on campus. When Professor Wachs moved to UC Berkeley in 1996, Taylor became the only faculty member on campus dedicated primarily to transportation teaching and research. That same year, he became associate director under Donald Shoup, who had replaced Wachs as UCLA ITS director.

In addition to serving as UCLA ITS director since 2001, Taylor is a professor of urban planning and public policy. He also chaired the Urban Planning department for three years and was the director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies for seven years. In recent years he has been an associate director of the Pacific Southwest Region 9 University Transportation Center and this year was chair of the council of directors for the four-campus UC ITS.

Building on Two Decades of Momentum

New director Adam Millard-Ball brings a wealth of experience in data science and climate change policy.

Incoming director Millard-Ball brings a wealth of experience in data science and climate change policy. He joined UCLA Luskin in 2021, and served as acting director of UCLA ITS during the 2022-23 academic year. In that time, Millard-Ball oversaw TRACtion: Transformative Research and Collaboration, an initiative that brought together academic researchers and community advocates to identify barriers to a just and sustainable future for Los Angeles.”I’m thrilled to lead UCLA ITS, which Professor Taylor has led and built up with his colleagues for more than two decades,” Millard-Ball said. “I hope to maintain our contributions to research and policy for our local community in Los Angeles, for California and across the U.S., and increasingly internationally as we confront the global challenges of climate change.”

The future for UCLA ITS holds more collaboration with engineering scholars at UCLA, exploration of climate issues in relation to transportation, work on equity and community engagement, and integration of innovative methods in data science.

As for Taylor’s future, he’s not going very far.

“I plan to remain active in transportation scholarship and policy, and look forward to devoting more time to research, teaching and mentoring in the years ahead,” he said.

Relaxing Traffic at LAX

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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.”

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Questions of Fairness, Financial Viability of Free Transit Rides

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Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA, spoke to States Newsroom about public transit systems that waived fares to woo back riders after the COVID-19 pandemic. In some locales, officials are debating whether the free rides are financially sustainable. Most cities that have recovered their pre-pandemic ridership have large populations that depend on public transit because they don’t have access to cars, Taylor said. But reduced or free rides make less sense in cities with more affluent commuters, such as San Francisco. “It’s difficult to make an equity case for it,” Taylor said. “There is an excellent argument to be made for free fares in the right situation. But to do it universally would cost enormous amounts of money and actually convey benefits to high-income people who don’t need it.”

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