California has a strong interest in reducing the externalities of vehicle travel. Parking policy offers one possible lever. When parking is abundant and free, theory and evidence both suggest that driving will be more attractive, and transit use less so. Taking steps to make free parking less prevalent, therefore, could nudge travel behavior in a more desirable direction. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, moreover, there is interest in the future of telework. Here too, parking could play a role, although its influence is more ambiguous a priori. This project draws on the 2010-2012 California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) to revisit the potential of parking policy to influence travel behavior. Across thousands of users and a broad spectrum of built environments, the CHTS records if a given trip used parking, if the driver paid for it and (if they did) its price, if the parking was on or off-street, and so on. Specifically, the project team analyzed the associations between parking availability and decisions to work from home, drive, and use public transportation were analyzed. The data confirms something that has long been anecdotally intuitive, but never empirically verified that the vast majority of California vehicle trips end in a parking space, and most of those spaces, both on- and off-street, are unpriced. The project team also estimated regressions demonstrating that, even controlling for a host of other factors, the presence of free parking is strongly associated with more vehicle ownership, more driving, and less transit use.

See Project 2022-13 for abstract. This project was combined with 2022-13

What will California’s transportation and land use future look like? Will Californians gain more mobility and housing options that support the state’s economic, social, and climate goals? Or will the car continue to shape what cities look like and how people get around in them? These questions are important because how Californians live and move in the future will be shaped by investments and policies made today. In this project, the researchers investigated the future of transportation, land use, and planning in California by exploring four transportation/land use scenarios for 2050 with a panel of 18 experts. The four scenarios were: (1) more city living and lots of traffic, (2) easy to get around without a car, (3) you’ll need a car to get around, and (4) lots of travel choices, but most will drive. Their consensus opinion was that the most desirable scenario (“Easy to Get Around without a Car”) is also the least likely to materialize, due to faults in the political planning process. Despite promising state policies to increase transportation choices, problematic local land use politics and patterns appear likely to yield a future scenario (“Lots of Travel Choices, but Most Will Drive”) that continues car dependence and chronic congestion, absent a significant rebuilding of government trust and capacity.d

California has increasingly turned to place-based, community-driven programs such as Transformative Climate Communities (TCC), the Community Air Protection Program (CAPP), and Regional Climate Collaboratives (RCC) to address the twin priorities of climate change and environmental justice. Transportation improvements are at the heart of these programs because of the potential to mitigate air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and inequities in access to transportation. However, these efforts are inherently difficult to evaluate as they often involve a diverse set of projects with different timelines and locations. Moreover, evaluators often face the challenge of isolating the effects of individual programs. Carefully selected control sites can support this effort, but no two communities are exactly alike, limiting the ability of evaluators to make meaningful comparisons. This research addresses how place-based climate action efforts are being evaluated, and what insights from the broader policy and plan evaluation research literature might inform evaluation design. The focus is on place-based, community-driven programs in California that encompass multiple interventions to address intertwined issues of transportation justice, climate change, and air pollution. While TCC, RCC, CAPP, and the Sustainable Transportation Equity Project (STEP) are the most high-profile programs, the project will also consider planning grants such as Sustainable Communities Planning Grants and Community-Based Transportation Plans. For each funded program site the research team will review planning and evaluation documents and annual reports to compile a dataset of data collection and evaluation activities classified by (1) type of activity being assessed (planning vs. implementation), (2) evaluation indicator (e.g. air quality, transportation accessibility), (3) data source (e.g. interviews, air sensors), and program design (e.g. cross-sectional vs. longitudinal, inclusion of control sites). The research team will complement the review of these documents with 10-20 key informant interviews with staff from state and local agencies to help understand how the evaluations are proceeding in practice, and which aspects of place-based program evaluations have proved most valuable, challenging, and scalable to other programs.