An Alternative for Funding California’s Road Repairs

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Professor and chair of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Michael Manville commented in an ABC10 story about a California funding method for road repairs that would have drivers pay based on the miles they drive. The so-called road charge method, if it becomes a reality, would require a monthly fee similar to how public utilities are paid. The system would be an alternative to the current gas tax as California aims to transition to a carbon-emissions-free future. Manville noted that gas tax revenues have declined due to increased use of more fuel-efficient and zero-emission vehicles. “What that’s led to is this idea that we could charge per mile driving, which of course is such a big change,” he said. Advantages of the current gas tax include low administrative costs, and “anyone who buys gas pays [the gas tax]; it doesn’t matter where they live or if you know anything about their car,” Manville said.

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Manville on California’s Ambitious Rail Plan

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Professor and chair of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Michael Manville commented in a Smart Cities Dive brief on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to shift 200 million daily passenger miles off the state’s highways and onto a zero-emission passenger rail system by 2050. The plan, estimated to cost $310 billion — involving local, state and federal funds — also would incorporate intercity, regional and local transit systems to the high-speed network. Aimed at reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, the project would also improve safety for travelers in the state, according to the proposal. “Shifting 200 million passenger miles off the roads is a big shift,” Manville said. However, “pulling vehicles off the road doesn’t prevent other vehicles from taking their place.” Manville also observed that in 20 years, money spent on rail has not seen strong results, “so I think it’s natural to look at big ambitious goals like this with some caution.”

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L.A.’s Sprawl Into Fire-Prone Areas

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Michael Manville, chair of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Reason about land-use policies that have led to the outward spread of housing in Los Angeles, including into fire-prone areas. For decades, state policymakers have been aware of the risk to homes in the “wildland-urban interface,” the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development, where man-made structures intermingle with vegetation that can fuel fires. Manville says the sprawl arises from “the desire to have … the most in-demand kind of housing, which is a nice little family home with a backyard, [and] you can’t do that without expanding outward.” Nearly 78% of residential land in Greater Los Angeles is reserved for single-family housing, the article notes, impeding any effort to relocate homes from the flammable outskirts toward urban centers. Manville called for zoning reforms to “take these areas that are zoned for very low density and allow them to build four or five units.”

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Manville on L.A.’s Spot Street Widening Regulations

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Michael Manville, professor and chair of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning, is cited in a Los Angeles Times editorial on the city’s longstanding street-widening requirements, so-called “zombie regulations” that are now getting the attention of local lawmakers. Under these regulations, in place since the early 1960s, new apartment and commercial developments are often required to dedicate part of the property to the city for road expansion. Road expansions account for L.A.’s “jigsaw-puzzle” configuration of widening and narrowing streets, according to the editorial. While intended to improve traffic flow, whether roads are congested or not, the editorial argues that the parcel-by-parcel widenings provide little or no congestion relief while they take out mature trees, parkways and sidewalk space. “I’ve studied urban regulations for 20 years, and this is probably the dumbest regulation I’ve ever encountered,” Manville said. The editorial also cites research by Manville showing that the road widening regulation increases the cost of housing.

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A Cautionary Note on Policies to Curb ‘Vehicle Miles Traveled’

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Research by professor and chair of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Michael Manville is the focus of Reason Foundation articles on state policies aimed at reducing the growth of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on California’s roads. Manville is among transportation professionals in the U.S. concerned about current state policies enacted to reduce VMT. California has the most ambitious goal of reducing VMT by 20% by 2030, while other states including Washington, Colorado, Minnesota and Massachusetts have set their own reduction targets. Manville’s work on VMT is reviewed in the October issue, and the November review takes a detailed look specifically at California’s VMT-reduction policy. In creating his report, Manville used input from a panel of experts from academia, as well as transportation practitioners to examine current practices for estimating induced travel from freeway expansions, to resolve areas of disagreement and to provide recommendations.

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Manville on California’s Proposition 33

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Michael Manville, chair of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, commented on a KQED podcast on California’s Proposition 33, which would repeal the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act. The state law prohibits local ordinances that limit initial residential rental rates for new tenants as well as rates for current tenants in certain residential properties. Pro-Prop. 33 advocates cite the state’s sky-high rents, while anti-Prop. 33 proponents characterize the ballot measure as a corporate anti-housing scheme. “If we’re serious about helping our most vulnerable tenants, that’s really going to involve some combination of making housing in general just much more plentiful, and spending money in targeted subsidies for low-income people,” Manville said. In a Caló News article, Manville said that Prop. 33, while well intended, could have a number of untended consequences. “Prop. 33 does not offer rent control to more Californians. It removes a law that limits how strong a rent control law can be right now.”

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Read the Caló News story

 

On U.S. Cities’ Reluctance to Embrace ‘Congestion Pricing’

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Urban Planning Chair Michael Manville spoke to LAist’s “AirTalk” about the reluctance among some cities to launch “congestion pricing” systems to ease traffic, raise revenues and improve climate conditions. Just weeks before Manhattan was due to implement congestion pricing, becoming the first U.S. city to take the plunge, New York’s governor halted the program. “Seeing it go down is not a good omen for the political fortunes of L.A.’s program,” which is far from getting off the ground as officials keep a series of studies under wraps, Manville said. In international cities including Singapore, London and Milan, he noted, congestion pricing has been successfully launched, with growing support among residents. “The funny thing about congestion pricing is that, in places where it has been implemented, people like it,” Manville said. “But it’s noncontagious. Almost no one looks at the success abroad and says, ‘Oh, we want to do that here.’”

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Ripple Effects From NYC’s Pause on Congestion Pricing

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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.

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Read the Los Angeles Times article

 

Congestion-Pricing Ambitions Slowed by ‘Internal Trepidation’

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A Wall Street Journal story about legal challenges to a plan to launch a congestion-pricing zone in parts of Manhattan in June cited Michael Manville, chair of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin. Pending litigation could delay the start of the program, which would charge passenger vehicles $15 during the day and $3.75 at night to enter the zone, with higher tolls for trucks. Many businesses and commuters argue that the program, approved in 2019, is ill-timed because communities continue to struggle in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Congestion-pricing zones have been successfully launched abroad, and transit advocates had hoped that New York’s program would spur action in other U.S. cities. But in places including San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles, momentum has slowed. “I would say it’s at a bit of a standstill,” Manvile said. “What’s happened in California, and particularly Los Angeles, is internal trepidation.”

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Stepping Up L.A.’s Plan for Safer Streets

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Urban Planning chair Michael Manville spoke to Bloomberg CityLab about the passage of a ballot measure aimed at speeding up the addition of hundreds of miles of bike and bus lanes, as well as wider sidewalks, on Los Angeles streets. The vote on Measure HLA served as a referendum on pedestrian and bicyclist safety and revealed frustration at the city’s slow pace of implementing a mobility plan adopted in 2015. “Hopefully, what this does is it lights a fire under the city to take seriously its own law that has been in effect for quite a while,” Manville said. The story also cited Jiaqi Ma, faculty associate director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and director of the UCLA Mobility Lab. “Unintended consequences need to be considered,” including potential increases in congestion, emissions and freeway traffic, Ma said, but he called the measure’s passage a “good step.”

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