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After the Pandemic, a Focus on Transportation Equity

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An article in the Hill on the post-pandemic future of public transportation featured research presented at this year’s UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium. The virtual learning series, hosted by the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, explored how the transportation sector can recover from the economic shock of COVID-19 in an equitable manner. The Hill cited two scholars who presented research during the symposium. Deborah Salon of Arizona State University shared results from a survey finding that many employees may prefer to continue working from home even after pandemic restrictions are lifted, decreasing commuter demand for transit options. Giovanni Circella of UC Davis pointed to a “massive shift” toward car travel among those who have reduced their reliance on public transit. “In the other direction, among those reducing driving, pretty much nobody is increasing the use of transit,” he said. 

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Wachs on Understanding the History of L.A. Traffic

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A StreetsBlog article highlighted the findings of a new paper by Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Martin Wachs and graduate students Peter Sebastian Chesney and Yu Hong Hwang about the history of Los Angeles traffic congestion. Their paper, “A Century of Fighting Traffic Congestion in Los Angeles: 1920-2020,” delves into the many arguments over how to battle congestion in the city over the last 100 years. While solutions including improvements in public transit and construction of new freeways have been proposed, these strategies have never brought more than a temporary reprieve from the unrelenting growth in congestion, the authors say. They argue that in order to address traffic congestion today, experts must understand the city’s complicated history with public transit and transportation infrastructure. Today’s proposals are not much different from past solutions, and even though mistakes have been made, it’s not clear that lessons have been learned, they wrote.

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Urban Planning Program Wins APA California Chapter Excellence Award

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The California Chapter of the American Planning Association honored the UCLA Luskin Urban Planning program with this year’s Landmark Excellence Award, a high accolade in the field of urban planning. Marking its 50th year, UCLA Urban Planning was recognized at the organization’s 2020 annual conference, held online Sept. 14-16. The awards jury acknowledged “the remarkable contributions to planning theory and practice that have emerged from UCLA’s top-tier students and faculty.” Over the past half-century, it said, the program has been “a hub of thought-provoking and ground-breaking scholarship in the field of community development, environmental planning, housing, land development, regional and international development, transportation and urban design.” Also winning an APA California Award was Katelyn Stangl MURP ’19, who received an award of merit under the academic category. As part of her master’s capstone, Stangl prepared a study on parking oversupply. With the help of Los Angeles City Planning, L.A. Department of Transportation and the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, she evaluated entitlements, permits and building plans of over 300 developments in Los Angeles. The findings of her research can contribute to making Los Angeles and other cities more walkable, less polluted and better designed by removing the incentives to produce unneeded parking oversupply. APA California is a network of practicing planners, citizens and elected officials committed to urban, suburban, regional and rural planning in the California.

Tilly Explains Business Model Behind Prop. 22

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Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly was featured on KCRW’s Greater L.A. discussing the pros and cons of Proposition 22 on the November ballot. If passed, Proposition 22 would reclassify app-based drivers with companies such as Uber, Lyft, Postmates and Doordash as independent contractors. This would exempt them from Assembly Bill 5, which classifies many gig economy workers as employees entitled to pay and benefits required by law. Tilly said these app-based companies rely on independent contracts to sustain their business model. “Their main cost is paying drivers. So it’s been a competitive strategy to draw in the drivers. … They can always offer them a particular price — take it or leave it,” he said. The app-based companies have spent millions on pro-Proposition 22 campaigning, and some have threatened to shut down service in California if it doesn’t pass. Opponents argue that the hidden costs of app-based driving, such as vehicle upkeep and waiting times between rides, will hurt drivers and decrease their profits.

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Manville on Public Sentiments Surrounding Transportation and COVID

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville was featured in a CityLab article on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on transportation ballot measures in the upcoming election. With transit ridership at low levels and many Americans out of work or working from home, experts are wondering how voters will respond to the transportation initiatives on the ballot. Manville said that it doesn’t necessarily matter if voters don’t plan to ride buses and trains anytime soon. He pointed to various transit measures that have passed in areas where the vast majority of enfranchised people drive. According to Manville, the promises of traffic relief, economic growth and environmental benefits can be more motivating for voters than the actual mobility services. “I think the bigger question now is whether the way people are experiencing COVID and the economic fallout has changed how they think aspirationally about their transportation system,” Manville said. “We just don’t know what that will look like.”

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Shoup Gauges Progress on Long-Needed Parking Reforms

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Cities of the Future checked in with Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, to gauge the progress of parking reforms he has long recommended to increase economic efficiency, protect the environment and promote social justice. Shoup favors charging fair-market prices for on-street parking, re-investing revenue in the neighborhoods that generate it, and eliminating the requirement that building developments provide off-street parking. One commonality among cities that have successfully implemented these reforms is that green activists have forged a coalition with merchants and other stakeholders, said Shoup, a noted author and leading researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. Shoup added that the COVID-19 pandemic has filled streets with bicycles, pedestrians and outdoor restaurants instead of cars, and this has made previously unthinkable parking reforms conceivable and perhaps unavoidable as cities sorely need the money that paid parking can provide.

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Matute on Expansion of Mobility Options

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke with Spectrum News 1 about a new electric-bike-sharing program in Santa Monica. Lyft will provide the e-bikes, replacing the human-powered bikes previously offered by the city. The new program is part of an expansion of services provided by app-based mobility companies. “Lyft and Uber see themselves as competing with people buying cars or people buying more cars per household, so they want to meet everybody’s full mobility needs,” Matute said. He also commented in a separate story on electric scooters offered for sale rather than short-term rental. As travel of all kinds has decreased during the COVID-19 lockdown, offering scooters for sale shows investors that these companies “can be nimble, that they have an opportunity to bring in revenue, to ride out this pandemic,” Matute said.

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Wachs on Local Ballot Measures to Raise Funds for Road Projects

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Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Martin Wachs spoke with Transportation Today about local ballot initiatives aimed at securing tax dollars for funding road projects. With federal funding in decline, this type of ballot initiative — known as  LOST for “local option sales tax” — could be on the rise. Wachs cited a study showing that most of the transportation measures put before voters in 2018 were approved. Successful LOST measures have several things in common, including citizen audits, flexibility within limitations, and an end date that puts voters in charge of whether or not it’s renewed, said Wachs, a scholar at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. The article also cited Jeremy Marks MURP ’20, who said a database has been created to provide planners and other interested parties free, comprehensive information on every LOST measure put before California voters.

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Shoup Offers Tips to Improve Parking in Cities

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Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup spoke to the Parking Podcast about his recommendations for improving parking in cities. First, he recommended charging a fair market price to use the curb. Parking meters are the exception in most cities. Shoup argued that parking “should be priced so there is never a shortage of parking.” He defined the fair market price as the lowest price a city can charge and still have one or two open curb spaces on every block. Next, he argued that cities should limit off-street parking, or at least remove off-street parking requirements. Shoup’s third recommendation is for cities to dedicate all or some revenue from parking meters to fund additional public services on metered streets, including landscaping, cleanliness and accessibility. He noted that if people know how the meter revenue is being spent to benefit the community, they may be less resistant to paying for parking.

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Manville on San Diego Transit Expansion Plans

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Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning, spoke to the San Diego Union-Tribune about the city’s transit plans. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata, who spent two years working on a transit expansion plan when the pandemic started, said he is determined to push forward with the $177 billion proposal. Ikhrata will present the plan, which includes 350 miles of new rail track, to the SANDAG board of directors. The plan has faced pushback from some who have said that the pandemic will radically change commuter patterns, threatening to render the plan obsolete by the time it’s under way. However, Manville argued that much of the pandemic’s impact will be temporary. “Right now, most of the economy’s still closed and you’ve got jammed roads,” he explained. “It seems hard to believe that in 20 years there will be no point to having mass transit to San Diego’s job centers.”

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