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This project reports on the recent past, present, and immediate future of public transit finance in California and Southern California in light of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the financial situation of transit operators in the state and the region appeared dire, with plummeting ridership and fares and rising subsidies and operating costs. However, the three enormous federal pandemic relief bills brought billions of dollars to California transit agencies and helped them weather the fiscal storm, until many of the state and local tax revenue sources on which the state’s transit agencies rely bounced back and more quickly than most forecasters initially predicted. Yet in 2023, many of the state’s transit systems are struggling operationally and financially. Ridership began eroding in the half-decade leading up to 2020. While the federal pandemic relief bills provided a critical lifeline to keep struggling transit systems afloat early on, these funds are running out. Meanwhile, operating costs have risen, ridership and fare revenues have only partially returned, and some transit systems face “fiscal cliffs,” where they will need substantial new infusions of funding, substantial cuts in costs and service, or some combination of the two. Against this backdrop, this project examines the current state of California transit finance: why ridership and fare revenues are down and their prospects for recovery; what lessons the successful federal relief bills provide; why commuter-oriented systems are struggling financially much more than those that primarily service transit-reliant riders; and what the financial managers at transit systems have done to cope with this turbulent time and how they see their future financial prospects.

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In recent decades, homelessness has become an increasingly major challenge in the U.S. Of the half million unhoused people in the U.S., many seek shelter in settings under the auspices of state departments of transportation (DOTs), such as freeways, underpasses, and rest areas. This project synthesizes existing literature and findings from interviews with staff from state DOTs, service providers, and organizations responding to homelessness. Homelessness represents a recognized and common challenge for DOTs, but the numbers and location of unhoused individuals in state transportation settings vary and fluctuate. As DOTs face jurisdictional, financial, and legal hurdles in responding, DOT staff employ both “push” and “pull” strategies, the most common of which is encampment removals. However, the effectiveness of such removals is limited. Other strategies include “defensive design” and, more proactively, establishing or partnering with low-barrier shelters, providing shelters and sanitation on DOT land, and coordinating rehousing and outreach efforts. The findings suggest that DOTs should acquire better data on homelessness on their lands, create a homelessness coordinating office, establish formal partnerships with nonprofits/service providers, and evaluate the necessity of encampment removals, through the development and utilization of prioritization criteria.

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Growing public interest in fare-free transit demands an assessment of fare-free and/or reduced transit fare programs, particularly how these programs may benefit disadvantaged communities, both urban and rural. Fare policy equity entials decisions about the similarities and differences in treatment afforded to various constituent groups. It also involves decisions about the extent to which travelers are expected to pay for the costs of serving their travel demand. This is of particular concern with regard to low-income, largely non-White, travelers, who are both disproportionately likely to use transit and to be burdened by the monetary costs of transit use. Given the foregoing, there is rising popular and scholarly interest in making public transit systems “fare-free.” Accordingly, in this research we will carefully review and synthesize the current states of both the practice of and research literature on fare-free transit. We will focus our review on the various dimensions of equity raised by charging for transit fares, and how they have/are likely to play out with conversion to fare-free transit service.

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By the fall of 2020, most transit systems had recovered to about half of their pre-pandemic ridership, but transit’s recovery largely stalled there, even as rates of driving, walking, and biking have mostly recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Research has shown that the riders who left transit in the pandemic tended to be higher income, better educated, more likely white or Asian, and with access to private motor vehicles. Spatial patterns of ridership have shifted dramatically as well, with downtowns and other major job centers losing the most riders, and low-income neighborhoods retaining the most riders. In net, the level, timing, and direction of transit travel have changed dramatically.

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Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, about five percent of the U.S. labor force worked primarily from home. Between February and April of 2020, the share of the labor force working from home skyrocketed to well over 50 percent in response to public health orders to contain the pandemic. While no one expects the share of those working from home to stay at such high levels as the pandemic recedes, there is considerable debate among experts on just how many workers will return full-time to employment sites. This research will review the well-established and substantial pre-pandemic literature on working from home and travel as well as the nascent but rapidly growing literature on working from home and travel in the COVID-19 pandemic to offer insights on the future of home/work location choices, commuting, and transportation mode usage, likely through the presentation of plausible future location/travel scenarios and their policy implications.

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The global COVID-19 pandemic has shocked many economic and social systems. One of the most profoundly affected has been the public transit systems that serve cities large and small. Ridership initially plummeted, service has been cut, and in some cases slashed, and public health concerns are many, and finances are increasingly tight on public transit systems around the globe, in the U.S., and here in California. To understand how public transit is evolving in the pandemic, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies researchers have looked into what transit service is changing, how it is changing, why it is changing, and for whom it is changing. The project has also examined how well the changes made affect the spread of COVID-19, and how transit can continue to safely serve the mobility needs of essential workers during the pandemic.

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The project’s ultimate goal is threefold. First, we will deliver a broad but accurate and relevant snapshot of vulnerable travelers in California. Second, we will use that information to carefully consider how different forms of congestion pricing might improve or degrade equity. Third and most important, we will use lessons from other safety net programs, and particularly those operating in the utility industry in California, to propose specific safeguards for poor and marginalized populations that can be built into congestion charging programs. We examine the fairness implications of congestion pricing and propose policy mechanisms to mitigate its potential unfair outcomes. Our project first empirically establishes the broad contours of travel by vulnerable populations in California’s major metropolitan areas. We then examine particular forms of congestion charging, and evaluate how they might affect equity. Finally and most importantly, we draw on models of the guardrails instituted by other public utilities to illustrate ways to have congestion pricing while still protecting low-income travelers.

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The United States’ transportation workforce is currently at a skills deficit in key areas. New and innovative transportation technologies and approaches threaten to exacerbate this situation. Yet, transportation workers need more than skills to implement new technologies: they need the skills to critically determine which technologies are likely to support a thriving nation and under what conditions. Additionally, transportation workers need the skills to support non-technology-focused solutions to the nation’s transportation challenges, including cultural, political, and social change.

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Aviation is a difficult sector to decarbonize. The high energy and power requirements of flight make electrification challenging and low-carbon liquid fuels face their own technical and practical hurdles. While much of the attention on air transportation pertains to passenger travel, the relatively smaller air cargo industry faces similar challenges to decarbonization as the passenger airline industry. In the face of a difficult to decarbonize aviation sector, carbon savings may be realized by facilitating modal shifts from air transportation to less-polluting ground transportation where feasible. California’s effort to build a high-speed rail network for interregional travel in California is an example of such a strategy and features prominently in the state’s Scoping Plan as one pathway towards meeting 2050 GHG emissions reduction targets in the transportation sector. Luskin Center for Innovation researchers propose conducting an exhaustive search of the relevant peer reviewed and grey literature on studies that examine the economic and environmental effects of policies, programs, and projects aimed at shifting passenger and cargo movements from the air to the ground.

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This project synthesizes three primary data sources—credit data, unemployment claims data, and small business loan and grant data—to explore the financial conditions of those who drive for a living before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in California. Automobile debt was high among groups likely to contain professional drivers. The occupational categories in which many drivers fall had high absolute and relative levels of automobile debt compared to other workers. After the onset of the pandemic, unemployment rose dramatically in the transportation industry and in transportation occupations, peaking at rates higher than the national average. However, state unemployment claims data, among transportation employee claimants only, show less of a spike. Contractor drivers lived in areas with more Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims, a special program for self-employed workers like gig drivers. Finally, contractor drivers received unprecedented but uneven federal small business loans and grants. Drivers in many areas, however, did not receive much or any of these funds, though those areas that did tended to have more residents of color. Assessing the full effect of the pandemic on professional drivers’ debt and finances will require additional and better data, particularly workforce data from gig economy firms that contract with drivers.

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This project examines the spatial distribution of tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) units and Low-income Housing Tax Credit units to understand whether geographic patterns and trends are consistent with climate change and equity goals. The analysis compares the location of HCV and LIHTC units in 2012 and net changes from 2012 to 2019 with a number of transportation, environmental, and racial and economic equity metrics. The change in HCV units from 2012 to 2019 shows promising trends for reducing vehicle miles traveled and increasing walkability and transit accessibility. LIHTC unit locations are, at best, somewhat more sustainable than the state overall, with slightly lower-skewing vehicle miles traveled and better walkability, though low transit accessibility. What environmental gains there were, though, come at the cost of higher exposure to pollution. HCV and LIHTC units are also concentrated in disproportionately low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, with worse access to economic opportunity. The findings reveal an inherent structural dilemma in whether the HCV and LIHTC programs are able to simultaneously achieve climate and equity goals.

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This project for the California 100 initiative examines transportation in California: where we are today, how we got here, and where we might be headed. We begin with facts on travel and transportation systems in California today. We next explore the decades of public and private land development and transportation systems that have shaped the current state of play: today’s transportation problems stem, in significant part, from yesterday’s land use decisions. We then consider factors that have either recently come to the fore or are likely to emerge in the near future. We review possible context-specific reforms to reshape transportation in the state, in order to better manage vehicle travel and reduce chronic congestion, shift patterns of development to make them less car-dependent, and increase access for all. Finally, we summarize the findings from a diverse panel of transportation experts convened to explore the possibilities, pitfalls, and implications of four possible future transportation and land use scenarios for California.

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Los Angeles County has spent tens of billions of dollars to build over 100 miles of rail transit, but today per capita transit ridership is 40 percent lower than before rail construction began. One reason for this startling failure is that LA remains overwhelmingly laid out for the automobile: it is a low-density, parking-heavy landscape where the built environment is not conducive to transit use. Our analysis will compare costs, project timelines, and community benefits of by-right and nearby discretionary projects. We will estimate reductions in project costs and time to market resulting from by-right approvals and compare benefits by assessing differences in affordable units provided by developers. This analysis will be used to project impacts to housing affordability and availability near transit, with estimated mobility impacts that could result, including changes to transit usage and vehicle-miles traveled.

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A recent survey by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that 85% of Californians are concerned about the presence of homeless people in their community and believe addressing this issue should be a top priority. Few scholars have studied the large and growing numbers of people who live in their vehicles. According to point-in-time count data from the 2019 Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, over 40% of the unsheltered homeless population in LA County, some 14,000 people, rely on vehicles (cars, vans, RVs) for shelter. The increase in vehicular homelessness raises challenges for both people who are experiencing homelessness and for cities. Vehicle living can be cost-effective relative to sky-high rents, but residents often lack essential amenities. At the same time, residents complain about the adverse effects of vehicle encampments on their neighborhoods. In response, this project seeks to create a better understanding of vehicular homelessness as a way for both homeless providers and transportation officials alike to address this precarious form of shelter.

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Transportation agencies use travel demand models (e.g., four-step models, activity-based models, dynamic traffic assignment models) to evaluate transportation improvement projects. However, existing travel demand models are unable to account for capacity changes of the network and mode shifts associated with connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies and services. This project aims to lay a foundational framework for the development of planning-level analysis capability that includes CAVs and engage in a small scale case study, toward a vision where practitioners have CAV-aware tools available. The research team will work with stakeholders in the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) to identify current needs in modeling CAVs and new mobility services in demand models. The project will develop methodologies to enhance the existing SCAG activity-based demand model, and the areas of enhancements include, but not limited to, capacity adjustments and new scenarios of travel behavior/choice modeling.

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The racist legacy of freeways has come into stark focus in the past year. This research focuses on one specific impact of freeways: neighborhood severance. Freeways disrupt the neighborhood street grid, creating particular hardships for pedestrians who must take circuitous routes to access transit and to walk to stores, schools, and other destinations. The impacts of disconnected streets on walking and public health are well documented (e.g. Handy 2003; Marshall et al. 2014; Barrington-Leigh and Millard-Ball 2019). But the environmental justice dimension of connectivity has remained unexplored, as has the link between most academic studies of street connectivity and local planning efforts. The research team will test the hypothesis that, while freeways disrupt street networks everywhere, the severance effects are greatest in BIPOC communities. This injustice might arise if White residents have more political voice to advocate for a denser mesh of local streets that cross the freeway, or to cancel a freeway proposal altogether.

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This project presents and reviews the available sources of data on public transit riders and ridership, as a resource for those who manage or simply wish to understand U.S. transit. In conducting this review, the researchers consider the advantages and disadvantages of publicly available data on transit from a variety of public and private sources, as well the relatively scarcer and less available sources of data on other providers of shared mobility, like ride-hail services, that compete with and complement public transit and pieces missing from the transit analytics pie. Data gaps both align with existing inequities and enable them to continue, unmeasured, as the COVID-19 pandemic has made closing these gaps all the more important.

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Street rights-of-way are typically a city’s most valuable asset. Streets serve numerous functions — access, movement, and the provision of space for on-street parking, children’s play, and social interaction. But the more land that is devoted to streets, the less land there is available for housing, parks, offices, and other land uses. In this research project, UCLA researchers quantified the width of streets in 20 of the largest counties in the United States, and the value of the land under those streets. This research found that streets in the U.S. are much wider than in other countries. Street widths are normally dictated by subdivision codes and local street design manuals. The highest street land values are found in coastal California, and streets could be much narrower.

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This is the second study of voter-approved transportation sales taxes in Los Angeles County performed by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies with support from the Haynes Foundation. The earlier study examined the history of the four half cent sales taxes enacted by voters in Los Angeles County between 1980 and 2016. The current study looked in depth at four issues raised but not addressed in the first one. We report on the extent to which the “local return” provisions of the four measures fund transportation programs and projects in the cities and unincorporated areas of the county. We also explored tradeoffs between accountability to the voters through audits and taxpayer advisory committees in comparison with the county’s flexibility to change program elements through amendments when conditions change. Accountability to the voters was enhanced in the later sales tax measures but amendment procedures have been used to respond to changing needs in the county. We examined lawsuits brought against Metro regarding implementation of the sales taxes and found that there have been rather few. The COVID-19 pandemic struck while the study was underway and in response the report also explores the impacts of the pandemic on transportation sales tax revenues and program expenditures. The transportation sales taxes through the end of year 2020 have been the most important and resilient LA Metro funding sources during the pandemic. Sales tax revenue declined but far less than did federal and state sources of finance and revenues from fares paid by passengers.

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California is growing faster and aging more rapidly than America as a whole. California’s population aged 60 years and over is expected to grow more than three times as fast as the total population. Older adults age in place – increasingly in suburban areas where access to transit and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods is limited. Data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey show that people over age 65 made 86% of their trips by automobile; 66% as drivers. As they age, however, many older adults limit their driving and ultimately lose the ability to drive altogether, affecting their quality of life in old age. This study explores relationships between aging, travel, mobility and residential relocation using a unique longitudinal database rarely before used in transportation research, the Health and Retirement Survey, augmented by other measures, such as transit accessibility.