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.
The Third Annual Emerging Scholars Transportation Research Symposium, hosted by the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center, will be taking place on March 2nd and 3rd online. This webinar will feature presentations by PSR students and researchers on their work. UCLA PhD candidates Hannah King and Teo Wickland will be presenting on their research as well as UCLA professor Dr. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. The event includes keynote presentations from Senator Fran Pavley and Dr. Susan Handy.
Columbia Law professor Sarah Seo's book "Policing the Open Road" is a thought-provoking look at how the automobile fundamentally changed the nature of police work, and thus the conception of freedom, in the United States. These themes are close to transportation studies, but too often ignored in transportation academia. These issues, moreover, will only become more salient as broader swaths of transportation academia seek to understand and study the role of race and ethnicity in freedom of mobility.
Multimedia artist Thompson-Hernández shares from his book, "The Compton Cowboys," and latest NPR podcast California Love. In Compton, California, 10 black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African American horse riders for decades. California Love is a new audio memoir about Walter's coming of age in Los Angeles.
This webinar is the first in a two-part series exploring the challenges and opportunities facing public transit. UC ITS experts will review the challenges facing public transit operators leading up to and amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, including changes in ridership, deepening fiscal issues, and growing social challenges related to homelessness, sexual harassment, and safety. The webinar will conclude with insights of a recent scenario planning exercise exploring how to build public transit back better in light of these many challenges.
This webinar is the second in a two-part series exploring the challenges and opportunities facing public transit. UC ITS experts will share key considerations for the recovery of public transit and for achieving the state’s broader vision for more sustainable, equitable, and cost-effective transportation. Topics to be addressed include: better serving the needs of mobility disadvantaged populations; leveraging new business models, technologies, and services to attract new riders; working more effectively with the private sector; protecting workers and jobs; and financing the future of public transportation.
