UCLA ITS held its annual Fall Lecture Series where researchers presented their work on transportation, land use, and urban planning policies. Topics include the future of rideshare and autonomous vehicles, a historical context on Los Angeles ports, and public policy associated with public transit.
Professor Emerita of City and Regional Planning and Urban Design, Elizabeth “Betty” Deakin presented the Martin Wachs Lecture, “Integrating Transportation, Land Use, and Environmental Planning for Social Justice and Carbon Reduction: Finding a Way that Works.” Deakin’s research focuses on transportation and land use policy and the environmental impacts of transportation.
UCLA ITS had 18 presentations from faculty, affiliated researchers and students at the TRB 99th Annual Meeting held in Washington D.C. UCLA faculty and students were awarded the Pyke Johnson Award for a paper on the mobility needs of aging adults, and several other students received recognition for their poster presentations and recent capstone projects.
InterActions LA discussed the opportunities to improve safety for women, girls, and other vulnerable populations as they travel throughout the Los Angeles region. Too often, people in these groups feel unsafe in public and this inhibits their freedom, independence and quality of life. This event presented new research by UCLA professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris on public transit safety from LA and around the world, along with real-world examples and thoughts for advancing safety for everyone. Participants had an opportunity to exchange their best ideas with each other and engage deeply on solutions to advance mobility justice for women, girls, and everyone.
The COVID-19 public health emergency has drastically changed every aspect of California life, including reducing personal travel by as much as half in many regions. As a result, transportation revenues are plummeting because user fees produce a large share of resources needed to operate California’s transportation system. Research by the Mineta Transportation Institute used simple spreadsheet models to estimate the impact of different scenarios for economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic on state-generated transportation revenues.
The role and usage of public transit in America has changed much over the past century, past decade, and even past few months in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. This session of the UCLA Luskin Virtual Summit series brought faculty affiliated with the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies to discuss the evolution of transit and its implications for the weeks, months, and years ahead.
The 2020 UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium found that smart policy and planning choices made as part of COVID-19 response and recovery can lead to more just, equitable, and sustainable transportation systems. Over the course of nine sessions, transportation practitioners and advocates looked at the economic, social, and racial dimensions of transportation in the pandemic along with new political opportunities for environmental justice and climate action in transportation.
Dr. Regan Patterson will present from her report for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which highlights ongoing challenges affecting African Americans in the transportation system and provides policy recommendations for how shared mobility, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles can equitably serve the Black community. She'll also discuss her research that focuses on the intersection of transportation, air quality engineering, and environmental justice.
What role can bicycling play in healing the intersecting harms of racial and climate injustice? Activists have learned that individual mode shift alone will not correct the extractive social effects of transportation governance and industries, but collective actions point toward regenerative possibilities. Professor Adonia Lugo will share ideas from her collaborations in mobility justice to argue for the significance of human-powered mobility in moving the transportation field toward a just transition.
While cyclists and pedestrians are vulnerable road users and face significant safety threats on roadways, environmental conditions in historically marginalized communities compound such vulnerability for people of color. Jesus Barajas takes a mobility justice perspective to contextualize street safety for cyclists and pedestrians. His research shows how identity shapes the way cyclists experience the streetscape, how safety has multiple meanings particularly for people of color, and how inequity in the distribution of infrastructure compounds police injustice in Black communities.
