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Exploring Impact of COVID-19 on Urban Mobility

In her introduction to a new book, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris writes, “The COVID-19 pandemic brought urban life all over the world to a standstill, it dramatically affected mobility and had ripple effects on the economy, environment and safety of urban areas. But not all residents were affected equally.” Loukaitou-Sideris, distinguished professor of urban planning and interim dean of the Luskin School, served as co-editor of “Pandemic in the Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery.” Published by Springer Nature, the book is a collection of original research articles by authors from UCLA and other University of California Institute of Transportation Studies programs. It explores various impacts of the pandemic on vulnerable populations, on the transportation industry and on other sections of the economy that rely on transportation. It also looks at the health crisis’ ongoing impacts on alternative forms of work, shopping and travel. Positive changes in urban transport, telecommuting, e-retail, walking and cycling are also explored, and authors discuss whether these altered patterns are likely to persist. The collection is dedicated to the late Martin Wachs, a leading scholar in the field of transportation planning.


 

Wasserman on San Francisco’s New Subway Line

Jacob Wasserman, research project manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to the San Francisco Standard about the new Central Subway, the long-awaited transit project connecting eastern San Francisco to Union Square and Chinatown. Among major U.S. metropolitan areas, San Francisco has been one of the slowest to economically recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, raising questions about the current demand for ridership on the new subway. To date, the project is $375 million over budget. Wasserman said that time and cost estimates tend to be highly inaccurate from planning to opening for public transit projects. “Ridership projections are often much higher than ends up being the case, costs overrun by orders of magnitude.”


 

Millard-Ball on Whether Driverless Cars Will Reduce Traffic Congestion

In late December, a ride-hailing service using driverless vehicles was expanded in San Francisco, and a reporter for Al Jazeera was among those taking a first ride. Assisted by two staffers from Waymo, the writer completes a 15-minute trip from the Castro District to the NoPa neighborhood in a driverless car without incident. The article mentions that autonomous vehicle proponents envision that parking spaces will become less necessary because driverless vehicles will simply drop off passengers and continue on their way. But there’s a downside to such a scenario, notes UCLA Luskin’s Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning and acting director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. Without the need to park, autonomous vehicles might actually increase congestion, cruising without passengers while awaiting riders. “There’s just not the physical space in most cities for unlimited free car use,” Millard-Ball says. “That basically destroys much of what makes cities livable and attractive.”


 

Manville on Proven Strategies to Improve Transportation

News outlets from around the country turn to Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning, for insight into transit and land use issues. Manville spoke to the Los Angeles Times about a question Mayor Karen Bass must consider: Should train and bus rides be free? History shows that this strategy to increase ridership on public transit can work, Manville said. In the San Diego region, a $160-billion plan to expand the rail system includes road charges that will levy a per-mile fee on drivers. “If you design the road-user charge correctly, some of the biggest beneficiaries will be drivers,” Manville told the San Diego Union-Tribune. In Kentucky, an attempt to ease congestion by adding lanes to highways is misguided, he said. “The typical highway widening project has costs that exceed its benefits and probably shouldn’t be done,” Manville told Louisville Public Media, noting that adding tolls is the only proven way to consistently reduce congestion.


 

Matute on Debate Over Transportation and Climate Goals in California

Juan Matute, deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, is quoted in a San Diego Union-Tribune article about the future of transportation in California in light of a state plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035. State leaders, researchers and proponents of various modes of transportation continue to debate solutions to meet California’s climate goals. Energy demand is expected to grow with increased heatwaves and electrification of everything from cars to households, and experts contend that converting to electric cars alone will not be enough. Phasing out fossil fuels; the use of clean autonomous vehicles, trains and buses; wind and solar power; as well as promoting dense, walkable neighborhoods are all part of the debate. “If you don’t change development patterns, you end up having more power generation, including delaying retiring existing natural gas plants to accommodate the switch to electric vehicles,” Matute said.

Celebrating an End to a ‘Slow-Moving Disaster’

Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to the Los Angeles Times about California’s new law barring local governments from mandating parking spaces as part of most development near transit stops. “This is one of the biggest land-use reforms in the country,” Manville said after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2097 into law. “Parking requirements have been an absolutely slow-moving disaster,” Manville said. “We are turning the ship around.” News outlets including StreetsBlog, Bloomberg CityLab and Mother Jones credited research by Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, with laying the groundwork for AB 2097. Shoup’s decades of scholarship pointed out the faulty and arbitrary reasoning behind parking requirements, whose unintended consequences have included raising the cost of of housing and commercial development, creating incentives to drive instead of using transit, and increasing emissions.


 

Electric Cars Only Part of the Solution, Millard-Ball Says

LAist spoke with Urban Planning Professor Adam Millard-Ball for a report on the history and future of the electric car. California’s plan to end the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 is expected to spur electric vehicle sales across the nation. “We’re not going to be able to resolve the climate crisis without electric vehicles,” Millard-Ball said. “And that’s mainly because transportation is such a big part of the climate problem.” The move toward emission-free cars is part of progression of automotive technology dating to the Clean Air Act of 1970, but it’s only part of the solution, Millard-Ball said. In addition to making individual vehicles more climate friendly, he called for “getting more people walking and biking and better buses, … a transit system that is a real competitor to the private car.”


 

Manville on Building Equity Into ‘Congestion Pricing’

A Los Angeles Times column about equity issues surrounding “congestion pricing” as a strategy to manage traffic and cut emissions cited Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning. Discouraging driving while encouraging mass transit use is the right thing to do, the column noted, but it asked whether charging for access to the roads creates a burden on lower-income communities. Manville argues that it is possible to put a price on driving while also maintaining a commitment to economic fairness. “The fact that pricing could create equity problems doesn’t mean it must. Nor does it mean that, for the sake of equity, all roads should be free,” he wrote in Transfers magazine. “Few equity agendas in other areas of social policy, after all, demand that all goods be free. Almost no one, for example, suggests that all food be free because some people are poor. Society instead identifies poor people and helps them buy food.”

High Price of Used Cars Impacts Low-Income People Most, Blumenberg Says

Since the return to a semblance of normal life after the pandemic lockdown, rising demand for vehicles, electronic parts shortages and shipping delays have driven up prices for new and used cars alike. This leaves low-income people at a particular disadvantage, Evelyn Blumenberg, an urban planning professor at UCLA Luskin, told the Tampa Bay Times. “Low-income houses just do better with a car,”  she said. “It’s higher rates of employment, better neighborhoods.” Blumenberg pointed to her research linking cars to stability — even in regions with robust public transit  — and showing that losing a car can spell disaster for people whose finances are stretched thin. Preliminary research data also show more people taking out auto loans, with higher dollar amounts, in lower-income neighborhoods that are historically home to cash buyers, says Blumenberg, who is director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.


 

‘Transit Has to Bear the Burden of Other Social Policy Failures’

A Washington Post story about businesses departing Union Station in Washington, D.C., over safety concerns cited Jacob Wasserman, a research project manager at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. The presence of homeless people and those suffering mental health crises has become more pronounced at the station, even as officials report that serious crime is down. Meanwhile, rail traffic has struggled to reach pre-pandemic levels. Union Station’s situation is not unique. Public transportation was one of the few climate-controlled options that stayed opened as the pandemic emerged, a time when public libraries closed and shelters implemented capacity restrictions, Wasserman said. “Transit has to bear the burden of other social policy failures, from housing to public safety,” he said. “And that’s hard for transit hubs because they were not designed for housing people … but it has become their issue, their responsibility by necessity.”