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Millard-Ball Receives Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award

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Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments by scientists and scholars from around the world. Trained as an economist, geographer and urban planner, Millard-Ball conducts research on transportation, the environment and urban data science. Award recipients are invited to collaborate with scholars based in Germany, and Millard-Ball is currently on sabbatical at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. Each year, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, named after the noted German astronomer and mathematician, is given to 10 to 20 internationally renowned academics. The awards are funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research and administered by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which promotes scientific advances, academic exchanges and cultural dialogue across borders. Award recipients were honored at a symposium in Bamberg, Germany, in March.

 

New Delays for LAX People Mover

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A Los Angeles Times story on delays in the construction of the $2-billion Automated People Mover at LAX cited Jacob Wasserman of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. The 2.25-mile elevated train, which will move people to and from airport terminals, parking lots, a rental car facility and the Metro connector, was originally expected to wrap up in 2023, but new forecasts point to an opening in fall of 2025. “The transit connection to LAX has been the white whale of L.A. rail transit. Some of that has to do with the kind of unique politics and financial structures of airports and transit agencies,” Wasserman said. “There are federal rules for [the] Federal Aviation Administration that say airport money has to stay at the airport.” Wasserman also told KNX radio that the People Mover’s opening will be welcomed but would not necessarily fix congestion issues on the airport’s notorious traffic loop.

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Listen to the KNX report

 

 

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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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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Moving Away From Public Transit’s Commuter Focus

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Brian Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to the Canadian Press about Ottawa’s transit system, once a model of innovation but now facing low ridership and budget woes. Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin, recalled attending a lecture about Ottawa’s transit success when he was a student in the 1980s. “Ottawa and Adelaide, Australia, were sort of the poster children for looking at a more cost-effective way to provide the metro-like service, but with less expensive buses,” he said. For decades, many people worked and studied in a concentrated area in downtown Ottawa, and the buses ferried riders on a transitway set apart from congested roads. Post-pandemic, transit systems would be wise to cater to communities rather than commuters, Taylor said. “The spatial and temporal characteristics of demand for transit are changing. It’s less downtown-centered, and more sort of moving from place to place,” he said.

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Paying for the Proposed Inglewood People-Mover

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A Los Angeles Times article about the financing of a proposed elevated train that would connect SoFi Stadium and other entertainment venues with the Metro K Line cited Jacob Wasserman of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. The Federal Transit Administration has pledged up to $1 billion for the people-mover designed to ferry riders through downtown Inglewood. The remainder of the project’s $2 billion price tag must be raised to lock down the federal award. While some officials noted that providing transportation is the job of government, Wasserman said a good case can be made that the owners of the entertainment facilities, including SoFi, the Kia Forum and the soon-to-be-opened Intuit Dome, should offer a financial contribution. “It is going to serve the customers there who pay money to go see events and games,” he said. “All transit serves businesses, and it’s a public service, but I think that this is disproportionately focused on these event venues.”

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Taylor on the Addition of New Toll Lanes on the 405

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Brian D. Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Orange County Register about the opening of new express lanes on the 405 Freeway. Motorists who use the two express lanes on 16 miles of the freeway in Orange County will have the option of paying a toll or carpooling. The lanes will be free to three-person carpools, but two-person carpools during rush hours will need to pay. Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy, said express lanes help keep traffic flowing compared to general lanes. For example, the two express lanes on the 91 Freeway carry about 45% of its total traffic. “Those two lanes are operating so much more efficiently that more people are getting through as a result,” Taylor said.

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Should Public Transit Be Free? It Depends.

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In an updated episode of the Freakonomics Radio podcast, Brian Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, weighed in on a question being taken up in cities across the country: If public transit is good for the environment, for social mobility and for economic opportunity, should it be free for all riders? “Public transit is very context-specific,” stressed Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin. Eliminating transit fares might make more sense in a place like Lubbock, Texas, where most riders are low-income, than in San Francisco, where many peak-hour BART riders have higher incomes than the average driver, he said. “Just saying generally, ‘Make it fare-free for everything, for all types of trips,’ I would not agree with that,” Taylor said. “The question is, do we need to give something valuable away to rich people for free on the argument that we want to help low-income people?”

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Taylor on Angelenos’ Travel Choices During Freeway Closure

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Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to LAist about how Angelenos coped with the temporary shutdown of the 10 Freeway. “If one piece of our network goes down, there’s a lot of opportunities for people to make changes and move around those things,” said Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy. “People adjust their behavior by changing their routes, changing the time of their travel, and changing the mode by which they travel, in that order.” Now that the freeway has been reopened, it’s unlikely these changes will stick, he said. The disruption may have had the positive effect of making people more aware of their commuting options, he said, “but it’s unlikely that the event itself … might cause people to reconsider their travel choices.”

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$7.5 Million Federal Grant to Establish Mobility Center of Excellence at UCLA

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The Federal Highway Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation, has awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant to establish the Center of Excellence on New Mobility and Automated Vehicles. The award will support research on the impacts of new mobility technologies on the evolving transportation system when deployed at scale. “Digital connectivity, automation and electrification have dramatically changed the way we transport, both in terms of how people travel and how goods are delivered,” said Jiaqi Ma, who will direct the new center. “We will study the impacts of these new technologies and how they can be better leveraged to improve equitable access to transportation and job participation.” Ma is faculty associate director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, where he leads the New Mobility program area. He is also an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, where the new center will be based. Scheduled to launch in November, the Mobility Center of Excellence, as it will be informally known, will assess the anticipated long-term impact of new mobility technologies and services on land use, real estate and urban design; transportation system optimization including resilience, security and reliability; equitable access to mobility and job participation; and the cost-effective allocation of public resources. The center will include researchers from UCLA Samueli, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, along with other universities and government and nonprofit groups.

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