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On L.A.’s Gridlock in Politics and Traffic

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Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky and Urban Planning Associate Professor Michael Manville were featured in a Capital & Main article about the political forces that often derail Los Angeles’ efforts to solve its transit crisis. The gridlock comes as climate change is increasing pressure to transition to greener, faster and more equitable mass transit. Transit-oriented cities like Boston and New York “did not divorce the automobile; they were married to transit from the start,” Manville said. Now, Los Angeles is trying to accomplish the same feat through electoral politics and public policy. As a county supervisor 20 years ago, Yaroslavsky proposed the Orange Line Bus Rapid Transit system, which was expected to carry 7,500 riders daily when it first opened in the San Fernando Valley. By the time Yaroslavsky left office, the Orange Line was carrying 30,000 per day. “Today, if you tried to get rid of the Orange Line, people would lie in front of the tractors,” he said.

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A Case for Removing Minimum Parking Requirements

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A Los Angeles Daily News op-ed written by UCLA doctoral student Nolan Gray featured Urban Planning faculty members Donald Shoup and Michael Manville. The piece focused on minimum parking requirements mandating that homes, offices and shops include parking spaces, as well as on Assembly Bill 1401, which would prohibit California cities from imposing these requirements within half a mile of transit — an area where residents, shoppers and employees are least likely to drive. Nolan pointed out that developers already have an incentive to include parking in order to lease or sell a space. Shoup noted that minimum parking requirements are a key culprit in the state’s affordable housing crisis because the cost of including parking gets added to rent and mortgages. Manville added that providing off-road parking is associated with a 27% increase in vehicle miles traveled and a significant increase in emissions, since people are encouraged to buy and drive cars instead of choosing more sustainable transportation options.

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Taylor on Encouraging Use of Public Transit

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Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Stateline about the future of public transit in the United States. Transit ridership, which plummeted 76% at the beginning of the pandemic, has increased in recent months, but no one is sure whether it will return to pre-pandemic levels. Taylor explained that public transit typically serves two groups: affluent people who find transit more convenient than driving and those who do not have access to cars. The first group virtually disappeared from public transit at the beginning of the pandemic. Taylor recommended implementing transit-friendly parking and land-use policies, such as reducing or eliminating parking requirements for office and residential buildings, to encourage transit use instead of driving. “Just spending more money and not doing those other things is not going to be a good investment if we continue to make it as easy as possible to drive,” Taylor said.

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Manville Imagines Congestion Pricing in California

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to American Automobile Association (AAA) Magazine about the prospect of congestion pricing in Southern California. Congestion pricing is a traffic-reduction strategy that aims to reduce the number of cars on clogged roads by making driving more expensive and, therefore, less appealing. Supporters point out that congestion pricing has successfully reduced gridlock in major cities, including London, Singapore and Stockholm, and that many people warm up to the strategy once they experience the benefits. When stay-at-home orders took effect early last year, Southern Californians experienced a region without gridlock firsthand, Manville said. “To the extent that you convince people that pricing is the policy path that gets you to a situation like that, then people having had this experience might help the cause,” he said. Congestion pricing is also a powerful revenue-generating tool, and the funds can be directed to other transportation projects and services.

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Manville on Making Space for Driving Alternatives

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to KCRW’s Greater L.A. about the return of traffic in Los Angeles. While streets and freeways were empty at the beginning of the pandemic, traffic levels have returned to about 90% of pre-pandemic levels in the region. According to Manville, L.A. needs to go much further when it comes to alternatives to driving. “As someone who studies this, but also as a cyclist and a pedestrian, Los Angeles has a very long way to go,” he said. “We are not a bold-moving city in this regard at all.” He pointed to efforts to create more space for bikes, pedestrians and buses in cities including Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. Local residents and politicians are the biggest barrier to changing the transportation industry, Manville said, but he hopes politicians will consider the needs of the overwhelming majority of residents instead of focusing on the loudest voices on both sides.

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Shoup Reflects on Evolution of Parking Industry

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Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup wrote an article in Parking Today about changes in the parking industry over the last 25 years. For most of the 20th century, the industry was stagnant, with parking meters that “looked identical to the original ones introduced in 1935,” Shoup explained. Since he published “The High Cost of Free Parking” in 2005, new technologies have made it possible to measure occupancy, charge variable prices for curb parking and make paying for parking much easier. Using license-plate-recognition cameras, parking apps and voice commands, many cities have been able to adopt demand-based pricing for curb parking. Shoup predicted that in the future, artificial intelligence may be able to determine optimal parking spots for price and time. “Better parking management can improve cities, the economy and the environment,” Shoup wrote. “The parking industry can help save the world, one space at a time.”

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Parking Access Encourages Driving, Millard-Ball Finds

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Recent articles in Medium and Sightline highlighted the findings of Associate Professor of Urban Planning Adam Millard-Ball’s new research on the relationship between parking and driving in cities. While many cities have been designed under the assumption that the urban environment should accommodate people’s desire to drive, researchers led by Millard-Ball found that that assumption is backward. “Increased parking causes more car ownership and more driving while reducing transit use,” the team concluded, noting that “buildings with at least one parking space per unit have more than twice the car ownership rate of buildings that have no parking.” The Sightline piece cited Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup’s observation that parking spaces are a “fertility drug for cars.” Furthermore, the research team found no correlation between parking supply and employment status, indicating that buildings with less parking do not limit the job prospects of their occupants.

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‘Saving the World, One Parking Space at a Time’

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In an interview with ITS International, Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup shared the key findings of his life’s work on parking and transportation. While most people don’t want to pay for parking, Shoup found that free parking takes up a huge amount of valuable land, and the cost of that land is shifted into higher prices for everything else. He also found that “free parking greatly increases the amount of driving, which congests traffic, pollutes the air and contributes to global warming.” To address these issues, Shoup recommended charging for curb parking, spending parking revenue on public services and removing off-street parking requirements in cities. Shoup believes that “better parking management can improve cities, transportation, the economy and the environment.” His recommendations are seen as a cheap and simple way to increase economic efficiency, protect the environment and promote social justice. “I’m trying to save the world, one parking space at a time,” said Shoup.

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Blumenberg Discusses Inequity of Flat Rate Auto Insurance

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Evelyn Blumenberg, director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and professor of urban planning, answers a question on WalletHub about the different types of rates charged to California drivers. She notes that lower-income drivers tend to benefit from pay-per-mile auto insurance because they travel fewer miles, on average. But, when charged a flat rate for insurance, “their rates are significantly higher per mile than those of higher-income drivers.” Blumenberg has also answered questions previously on the consumer-oriented website.

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Taylor on Return to ‘Normal’ Transit Ridership

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Urban Planning Professor Brian Taylor was featured in a Ventura County Star article discussing the public’s hesitation to return to public transit. In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people driving on freeways and using public transportation plummeted due to stay-at-home orders. While driving has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels, public transportation is experiencing a much slower recovery. Taylor said concerns about safety likely played a role in the recent decrease, but he attributed much of the ridership losses to the large increase in people working from home. “The question is, ‘Are we going to get back to normal?’ ” said Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. “Well, what was normal? Normal was that we were having this erosion of riders, and that’s not necessarily the normal that the transit operators would want to get back to.”

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