UC Berkeley hosted the inaugural Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture--presented by Bent Flyvbjerg, professor of planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and a former Wachs doctoral student. Flybjerg discussed the tendency of megaprojects to go over budget, with nine out of 10 estimated to incur cost overruns. Demand for particular megaprojects are also significantly overestimated, while their budgets greatly exceed initial estimates, creating a costly, underutilized project. How should this overoptimism and overcomplexity be addressed through policy?

The 2nd annual Wachs Lecture, and the first held at UCLA, was delivered by Anthony May, professor at Leeds University. In his lecture, May explored the history and future of efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of transportation systems and increase their contributions to the sustainability and livability of cities, drawing on his decades of research in the United Kingdom. His lecture was followed by a commentary by Gail Goldberg, then planning director of the City of Los Angeles.

Berkeley hosted the 3rd annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture where Susan Hanson, professor emerita of geography at Clark University, tackled the complex issues surrounding gender and mobility. Hanson emphasized how feminists have long known that gender and mobility are inseparable, influencing each other in profound and often subtle ways. She noted that tackling these complex societal problems will require improved understandings of the relationships between gender and mobility.

UCLA hosted the 4th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture by Alan Altshuler, professor of urban policy and planning at Harvard. He examined the new debates about funding for surface transportation, and posed the question of how managing road congestion will occur in an era when major capacity expansion is rarely feasible. These debates are routinely framed around conceptions of equity. Altshuler explores the distinctive nature of equity debates in U.S surface transportation, with particular attention to congestion pricing and High Occupancy Toll Lanes.

Berkeley hosted the 5th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture where Genevieve Giuliano, faculty at the University of Southern California, examined outcomes of four decades of transit policy. Using two examples, mobility for the disadvantaged and transit impacts on land use, Giuliano showed that little progress is being made in achieving transit’s objectives. Yet, as she demonstrated, public transit continues to receive strong public support, and subsidies continue to grow. Investment and service decisions have created major barriers to achieving public transit’s urban planning objectives.

UCLA hosted the 6th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture featuring Mei-Po Kwan, now Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Systems at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. Transportation researchers have long recognized the role of time in influencing activity-travel behavior. Kwan examined a different notion of time and its implications for transportation and health research, revisiting some fundamental concepts like distance, accessibility, and geographic context, while exploring new conceptualizations that take time into account.

The 7th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture, hosted at Berkeley, featured Edward Glaeser, Professor of Economics at Harvard Kennedy School. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. His work focuses on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission.

UCLA hosted the 8th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture where Patricia Mokhtarian, faculty at Georgia Tech, lamented that travel is now viewed primarily as a “derived demand” : travel occurs only so that people can enjoy the goods and experiences attained at their destination but not because the journey in and of itself brings enjoyment. Her aim is to restore balance to how we conceive of travel by placing travel into the category of behaviors that have a dual nature: those that have on the one hand a utilitarian (functional) aspect, yet also bring a hedonic (pleasing) dimension.

The 9th annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture, hosted at Berkeley, featured Catherine Ross, Professor of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech, who spoke about the challenges in maintaining and growing economic well-being in an era of new transportation modes. With increased transportation capacity and greater mobility comes congestion, air pollution, and urban sprawl as well as other issues. This current dilemma and hypermobility demands a transport agenda for this global era to be set.