Latest Issue Of ACCESS Magazine Now Available; New Website Launched The magazine which translates academic research into readable prose is now available at accessmagazine.org

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The Fall 2014 issue of ACCESS magazine is hot off of the press and now available to view at the brand-new ACCESS website, accessmagazine.org. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find in the latest issue:

Phantom Trips

Adam Millard-Ball

When you see a new development being constructed, the first thing you might think is how much traffic it might bring to your neighborhood. (Well, that and will there be a good coffee shop there.) You may not be aware that developers pay more in costs based on the estimated number of new trips their developments create. But when that new coffee shop gets put into your neighborhood, how many new trips are really created?

Trip Generation for Smart Growth Projects

Robert J. Schneider, Susan L. Handy, and Kevan Shafizadeh

Developers must evaluate how much a new project will add to local traffic levels. If deemed necessary, developers must then invest in substantial capacity-adding projects, which can make some infill projects financially infeasible. But how much new vehicle traffic are developments creating, especially in smart growth areas?

Pounds that Kill

Michael L. Anderson and Maximilian Auffhammer

When you buy a car, you may not be thinking of the effect you have on other people. But more and more, we see that there are public costs to private choices. Your car may produce more pollution than another car, thus leading to an environmental impact affecting others. But what about the weight of your car? How does that affect others?

Fuel-Efficiency Standards: Are Greener Cars Safer?

Mark Jacobsen

The United States has strengthened its fuel efficiency regulations several times in recent years in an effort to reduce environmental, economic, and energy costs. These standards have led to an in increase fuel efficiency by manufacturing lighter, lower-horsepower vehicles. But are these new fuel-efficient vehicles safe?

An Innovative Path to Sustainable Transportation

Dan Sperling

At one time, it looked as though humanity might go on a greenhouse gas (GHG) diet simply by running out of fossil fuels. But due to new and improved technologies for finding and extracting oil, including extraction techniques like fracking and horizontal drilling, we are far from running out of oil. So how do we cut back on GHG levels, and the environmental impact they have, if we’re not running out of oil?

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Making Parking Meters Popular

Donald Shoup

When it comes to making a list of things people are excited about, parking meters are not just near the bottom, they’re not on the list. So how can government officials gain local support for parking meters? Donald Shoup’s answer: grant parking discounts to residents.

 

American Women Less Likely to Bike Than Dutch Women, Here’s Why Domestic roles influence the cycling habits of women across the world.

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By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
UCLA Luskin student writer

The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies’ Herbie Huff and transportation policy and planning doctoral student Kelcie Ralph say that American women are less likely to bike than Dutch women, largely to differences in domestic roles rather than infrastructure.

In an op-ed that ran in The Guardian’s bike blog on Oct. 3, the researchers said that “Despite years of progress, American women’s lives are still disproportionately filled with driving children around, getting groceries and doing other household chores…that doesn’t lend itself easily to two wheeled transportation.”

Their claims that infrastructure does not account for the differences in male and female bikers are supported by Ralph’s research, which reveals disparities between Dutch culture and labor policies as well as the gender gap of bikers in the U.S.

To learn more about their solutions to these disparities, you can read the full article here.

 

Shoup Receives his Second Rapkin Award for Best Article in JPER The Chester Rapkin Award for the Best Paper in JPER is intended to encourage the submission of high quality papers.

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The Chester Rapkin Award for the best article to appear in this year’s Journal of Planning Education and Research goes to Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup for “Graduated Density Zoning.” A shorter version of the article has also been published in Zoning Practice.

According to the awards committee the article “presents a potentially very important innovation in zoning, which could have significant application in practice. It also constitutes a theoretical advance in the idea of zoning, which remains a key part of land use planning. In form, the paper is a model for how to write an academic paper within a professional domain. It is persuasive, elegant, and economical. The author uses examples and ingenious figures to make its message clear, and it is beautifully written. In sum, this paper provides lessons for all of us, both in our search for ways to improve planning, and in how to present our work.”

The award will be presented at the annual ACSP awards luncheon which will take place in Arlington, VA, October 3, 2009.

Shoup and co-authors Jeffrey Brown and Daniel Baldwin Hess, received this award in 2004 for their article on “Fare-Free Public Transit at Universities“.

The Chester Rapkin Award for the Best Paper in JPER was established in 1987 to honor Professor Rapkin at his retirement. It is intended to encourage the submission of high quality papers. Award-winning articles reflect the scope of Rapkin’s work and have ranged from multi-attribute evaluation to the challenges of participatory planning.

Institute of Transportation Studies Contributes to New Sustainable Transport Program The Program for Sustainable Transport brings researchers together from more than 30 disciplines on six campuses to seed multi-disciplinary initiatives.

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The University of California Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) Multi-campus Research Unit received a major grant to create a new Program for Sustainable Transport. The new program, supported by an initial 5-year award of $6.25 million from the UC Office of the President, was selected under the auspices of the Multi-campus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI.) Leveraging the substantial capabilities of ITS, The Program for Sustainable Transport designs tools, policies, and programs to reduce congestion, oil use, local air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, in ways that contribute to economic growth and social well being. The program focuses on three specific integrated activities: vehicles and fuels, infrastructure investment and system management, and land use and mobility planning.

The new Program for Sustainable Transport supports research, education, and outreach activities on six UC campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Riverside, Santa Barbara, and UCLA. UCLA ITS director, Brian Taylor, and associate director, Allison Yoh, contributed to the creation of this program; Taylor will serve on the program’s executive committee.

The Program for Sustainable Transport brings researchers together from more than 30 disciplines on six campuses to seed multi-disciplinary initiatives, including collaborations between economists, geographers, ecologists, city and regional planners, public policy analysts, engineers from civil, environmental, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer scientists and experts in energy. In addition to cutting-edge research targeted at key societal needs and key state initiatives that are unfolding over the next few years, this new program supports the training of the next generation of experts and leaders. UCLA researchers in the Institute of Transportation Studies, which is housed in the School of Public Affairs, are slated to focus on infrastructure investment, system management, land use, and mobility planning in their work with the center.