New Sustainable Transportation Program at UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies
posted: Oct 15, 2009
The University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) received a $6.25 million grant to create a new Program for Sustainable Transportation over the next five years. The new program is funded by the UC Office of the President and will bring together researchers from more than 30 disciplines on six UC campuses to seed multi-disciplinary initiatives, including collaborations between economists, geographers, ecologists, city and regional planners, public policy analysts, engineers from civil, environmental, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer scientists and experts in energy. UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and Lewis Center faculty affiliates will focus on three specific projects this year:
-JR DeShazo, Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, and Rui Wang, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, will be working in collaboration with faculty from UC Irvine and other campuses to address the needs of local and regional governments. The project will identify information needed to engage more effectively in sustainable land use and transport planning. Work will include canvassing the range of existing local government initiatives related to GHG emissions from the transport sector, and prioritizing local policies and practices for further study.
-Allison Yoh, Associate Director of the Lewis Center; and Brian Taylor, Professor and Chair of Urban Planning and ; Director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies will work with researchers at UC Berkeley to assist Caltrans in developing a statewide transit strategic plan. The plan will facilitate the delivery of cost-effective public transit services to improve mobility, contribute to climate stabilization, and support employment access. Effective transit services will require coordination between many agencies and institutions, including the transportation community, land use authorities, environmental groups, metropolitan planning organizations, and state and federal agencies. Yoh and Taylor will address the challenge of aligning multiple (and many) interests to a common goal by recommending measures for performance, and mechanisms for enforcing accountability.
-Michael Manville, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Lewis Center, and Donald Shoup, Professor of Urban Planning, will conduct an evaluation of barriers to the successful implementation of performance-priced curb parking. Both Los Angeles and San Francisco currently are engaged in multi-million dollar experiments with market-priced parking to test their efficacy in reducing vehicle miles traveled (and therefore carbon emissions, energy expenditures, and other pollutants), and in generating significant revenue. Early evidence from both cities, however, suggests that these experiments may be undermined by large amounts of legal and illegal nonpayment. This project will estimate the magnitude of the nonpayment problem, identify its sources, and suggest ways to overcome it.