UCLA Scholars Publish Reports on Future of California Transportation, Housing

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UCLA scholars have published two new reports on the future of California, as part of the California 100 initiative. One paper, issued by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, focuses on recommendations for transportation and urban planning. The authors describe policy alternatives around four possible scenarios:

  • Residents will need cars to get around.
  • There will be more city living and lots of traffic.
  • Multiple modes of travel will be available, but car travel remains the primary one.
  • It’s easy to get around without a car.

The second report, produced by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, cityLAB UCLA and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, puts forth policy suggestions based on two interrelated factors: how much (and where) housing is built, and how much planners prioritize social and racial equity. The transportation and housing reports were published in concert with two other California 100 analyses, one on energy and the other on technology. Nine additional reports are expected to be published this spring.

Read more about the UCLA-led California 100 reports.

Blumenberg on Car Access and Upward Mobility

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Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg spoke to station WFAE about attempts to increase transportation options for low-income residents of Charlotte, North Carolina. Officials have adopted a plan to make the city more dense, walkable and transit-accessible, but it would take decades to implement. Since the city was designed around the automobile, some are advocating increasing access to cars. Options include subsidies to purchase a vehicle, vouchers for ride-share services and neighborhood car-sharing programs. Blumenberg, director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, said her research shows that low-income people with cars are able to move to better neighborhoods and are more likely to find and keep a job. “A car gives you a lot of flexibility and a lot of choice,” she said. Blumenberg also described the Los Angeles program BlueLA, which subsidizes the sharing of electric vehicles, noting that encouraging the use of EVs could make increased access to cars more politically palatable.

Listen to the report

 

Doctoral Student Honored for Transportation Research

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Julene Paul, a Ph.D. student in urban planning, was named the 2021 student of the year by the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center, a federally funded network of eight partner campuses in Arizona, California and Hawaii. Paul works closely with the Institute of Transportation Studies and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin. Her research includes a study of the effects of COVID-19 on transportation behavior, an investigation into trends in automobile ownership, and a deep dive into BlueLA, an electric-car-sharing program that provides services to low-income areas of Los Angeles. She has presented some of her work at national conferences and has been published along with her co-authors, including her advisors, Evelyn Blumenberg and Brian Taylor. Paul’s interest in transportation was stoked while studying urban policy and working as a research assistant for the Education Innovation Laboratory as an undergraduate at Harvard University. Later, while pursuing her master’s degree in city and regional planning at Rutgers University, Paul worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. After graduating from Rutgers, she went on to work as a program manager at the Federal Transit Administration. When asked for advice for the current generation of urban planning students, Paul recommended taking advantage of internship opportunities and seeking out mentors from these experiences. She also encouraged students to venture out beyond their required classes when possible. Paul said a UCLA Law course in employment law challenged her to think critically about transportation policies and their effects on workers.

 

Faculty Reported Among Top 2% in Scholarly Citations

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Eighteen faculty members affiliated with UCLA Luskin are included in a listing of the top 2% for scholarly citations worldwide in their respective fields as determined by an annual study co-produced by Stanford University researchers. The 2021 report is a publicly available database that identifies more than 100,000 top researchers and includes updates through citation year 2020. The lists and explanations of study methodology can be found on Elsevier BV, and an article about the study was published by PLOS Biology. Separate data sets are available for career-long and single-year impact. The researchers are classified into 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields, with field- and subfield-specific percentiles provided for all researchers who have published at least five papers. The following current and past scholars with a UCLA Luskin connection met the study’s criteria to be included among the most-cited scholars:

Laura Abrams

Ron Avi Astor

Evelyn Blumenberg

Randall Crane

Dana Cuff

Yeheskel Hasenfeld (deceased)

Aurora P. Jackson

Duncan Lindsey

Susanne Lohmann

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Thomas Rice

Ananya Roy

Robert Schilling

Donald Shoup

Michael Storper

Brian Taylor

John Villasenor

Martin Wachs (deceased)

 

Blumenberg on Supporting Transit Rider Mobility

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Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg spoke to the Fresno Bee about the impact that car access has on socioeconomic mobility. “There’s a very robust connection between having a car and having a job,” Blumenberg said. In Fresno, the commute times for bus riders are nearly double the commute times for car owners, and this makes it difficult to plan a sequence of trips to be on time for class or work. Blumenberg said the challenge is compounded for women, and especially mothers, who often carry the burden of taking their children to child care, school or the doctor. Fresno is working to increase the frequency of transit services to decrease commute times, but these improvements in service can have a limited impact in sprawling regions like Fresno. Blumenberg suggested building a denser network of housing and jobs, close to existing transit lines. This can help shorten travel distances, making transit more efficient and comparable to driving.

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ITS, Lewis Center Win Research Awards to Help Shape California’s Future UCLA Luskin-based centers join an ambitious initiative aimed at forging strategies for the state's long-term success

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Two centers housed at UCLA Luskin have received research awards from California 100, an ambitious statewide initiative to envision and shape the long-term success of the state.

The Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies will evaluate current facts, origins and future trends in housing and community development, while the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies will look into transportation and urban planning. In total, researchers from four UCLA organizations will spearhead three of the 13 California 100 research areas.

The Lewis Center will summarize California’s housing market and outline a vision for how policy changes could lead to a brighter future for the state’s residents, with a particular focus on increased equity and housing production. Working alongside cityLAB UCLA and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, the Lewis Center team will also create a visualization of this future through creative techniques of diagramming, drawing and rendering to help readers picture the possibilities for California’s communities.

UCLA ITS will delve into transportation policy contradictions: California has invested substantially in public transit, while other public policies encourage driving and work against transit. As the state looks to meet its climate and equity goals, transportation systems — and the land use context surrounding them — will play a key role.

Research for both projects is slated to begin over the summer and be complete by December 2021, and will lead to a set of policy alternatives for the future of California. The policy alternatives will be developed in conjunction with research teams from the other California 100 issue areas.

The California 100 Commission is a multi-generational advisory body that will develop recommendations for the state’s future and test those recommendations across a broad set of policy areas by directly engaging Californians.

“From climate change to aging populations and rapid changes in industry, California will face enormous challenges in the years ahead,” said Kathrick Ramakrishnan, California 100 executive director. “We are fortunate to be able to draw on the deep talent of researchers in California to produce evidence and recommendations that will inform robust public engagement and set the state on a strong, long-term trajectory for success.”

About the California 100 Research Grants

California 100 is a new statewide initiative being incubated at the University of California and Stanford University focused on inspiring a vision and strategy for California’s next century that is innovative, sustainable and equitable. The initiative will harness the talent of a diverse array of leaders through research, policy innovation, advanced technology and stakeholder engagement. As part of its research stream of work, California 100 is sponsoring 13 research projects focused on the following issue areas:

  • Advanced technology and basic research
  • Arts, culture and entertainment
  • Education and workforce, from cradle to career and retirement
  • Economic mobility and inequality
  • Energy, environment and natural resources
  • Federalism and foreign policy
  • Fiscal reform
  • Governance, media and civil society
  • Health and wellness
  • Housing and community development
  • Immigrant integration
  • Public safety and criminal justice reform
  • Transportation and urban planning

Study Identifies Regional Patterns in COVID-Related Food Insecurity

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, disadvantaged households in the San Francisco Bay Area were at higher risk of food insufficiency compared with similar households in the Los Angeles and Inland Empire regions, according to new UCLA research published in the journal Public Health Nutrition. The study was conducted by Professor Evelyn Blumenberg, director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin; Professor May Wang of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; and doctoral students Miriam Pinski and Lilly Nhan. The researchers evaluated U.S. Census Bureau survey data to understand regional differences in the determinants of food insufficiency, defined simply as not having enough food to eat. The team focused on three metropolitan areas: San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley; Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim; and Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario. Overall, the rate of food insufficiency was lowest in the Bay Area, one of the state’s most affluent regions. However, the Bay Area’s disadvantaged households fared worse than their counterparts in Southern California. “Income and educational levels are higher, but income inequality and cost of living are also higher” in the Bay Area, the researchers explained. The study pointed to Los Angeles as a region where an active food distribution network was already in place, enabling governments, schools and community organizations to respond more effectively to the sudden increases in food insecurity brought about by the pandemic. The study was designed to guide the development of economic relief programs and increase the reach of federal assistance programs to address widening health disparities.

 

Blumenberg on Lack of Equity in Transportation Sector

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Evelyn Blumenberg, urban planning professor and director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, was cited in a Bloomberg Government article about President Biden’s efforts to promote equity in his administration. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has pledged to consider the needs of minority communities when evaluating old projects or considering new ones, but he has also acknowledged the hurdles that exist — including in the Transportation Department itself. The department’s employees are 74% male and 70% white, and these demographic trends have been consistent for at least 20 years, if not longer. Many transportation projects have negatively impacted lower-income people and communities of color, an issue that has been exacerbated by the lack of diversity in transportation policy officials. Blumenberg commented that the transportation needs of low-income communities have only been “sporadically addressed” on the national level. 

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Opportunities and Obstacles for Rental Housing Registries

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Rental housing registries require landlords to register and report basic information about their units, assisting with building inspections and enforcement of tenant protections. Roughly a dozen California cities already have rental housing registries, including Los Angeles, and the state legislature has considered establishing a statewide registry each of the past two years. On January 20, join a slate of panelists including Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, author of recent bills to expand registries statewide, to discuss the role of rental housing registries, obstacles to their adoption, and their potential to improve our understanding of the housing market and better protect California’s renter households.

Themes: 

  1. What are rental housing registries being used for today? Who benefits from them?
  2. What do opponents have to say about these registries, or what other hurdles exist to their creation? In particular, how are privacy concerns being addressed?
  3. What untapped potential do rental housing registries have? What could they do that they’re not currently being used for?

Panelists: 

  • Assembly member Buffy Wicks, California Assembly District 15
  • Catherine Bracy, Executive Director, TechEquity Collaborative

Blumenberg on Pandemic’s Impact on Transit Riders

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Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg spoke to Time about mass transit systems across the country that are floundering amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Sinking ridership has fueled extreme budget shortfalls, forcing transit authorities to slash routes and delay scheduled expansions, the article said. Blumenberg, director of UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, said diminished transit services will severely impact Americans on the bottom rung of the income ladder. “Transit ridership has always been disproportionately low-income, non-white riders, immigrant riders,” Blumenberg said. “That composition is even more disproportionately poor, non-white and immigrants during the pandemic.” Congress is considering a new coronavirus relief package that is likely to include limited assistance for U.S. transit systems, the article noted, but it added that additional investments are needed to spur economic recovery and address inequality. 

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