Transit Investment Impacts on Land Use Beyond the Half-Mile Mark

Status

Complete

Project Timeline

Principal Investigator

policy brief

An L.A. Story: The Impact of Housing Costs on Commuting

Abstract

Concerns about the environmental impacts of transportation have made reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) a policy priority. One way to decrease VMT is to decrease the length of commuting trips, and to get commuters out of their private vehicles. Although many studies have investigated the determinants of commuting, few have analyzed the linkage between housing costs and commuting.

To address this gap, researchers at UC Irvine developed a model that jointly explains commuting time and distance, and accounts for residential self-selection (i.e., where someone chooses to live), the effect of car ownership, and key land use characteristics around both residences and workplaces. The research focused on Los Angeles County. Census data shows that the average commute time for Los Angeles County residents pre-pandemic was 32.8 minutes, 18.8 percent higher than the national average.

policy brief

Grocery Shopping in California and COVID-19: Transportation, Environmental Justice, and Policy Implications

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic upended many aspects of our lives, including how we shop for groceries. As grocery stores scaled back their opening hours and managed access, many shoppers switched to online shopping with home delivery (“e-grocery”) or store pick-up (“click-and-pick”). Few empirical studies published to date have explored how the COVID-19 pandemic changed grocery shopping, the extent to which these changes may last, how the pandemic exacerbated grocery store access inequalities, and how access to groceries in California is intertwined with environmental justice concerns. Moreover, most studies on this topic were based on non-random samples, which can provide quick results in a fast-changing environment but their findings are not generalizable.

This brief explores the effects of changing grocery shopping trends on disadvantaged communities in California. Using data obtained by surveying California members of KnowledgePanel,® the largest and oldest online probability-based panel representative of the U.S. population, the research team explored the frequency of grocery shopping in California and likelihood of it changing after the pandemic; the types of stores Californians shopped in for groceries during the pandemic and who used grocery delivery companies; and how / if environmental justice factors played a role in observed changes in grocery shopping.

published journal article

Peaked Too Soon?: Analyzing the Shifting Patterns of P.M. Peak Period Travel in Southern California

Abstract

Daily vehicle travel collapsed with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 but largely bounced back by late 2021. The pandemic caused dramatic changes to working, schooling, shopping, and leisure activities, and to the travel associated with them. Several of these changes have, so far, proven enduring. So, while overall vehicle travel had largely returned to pre-pandemic levels by late 2021, the underlying drivers of this travel have likely changed.

This research examines one element of this issue by analyzing whether patterns of daily trip-making shifted temporally between the fall of 2019 and 2021 in the Greater Los Angeles megaregion. The research team used location-based service data to examine vehicle trip originations for each hour of the day at the U.S. census block group level in October 2019 and October 2021. The team observed notable shifts in the timing of post-pandemic PM peak travel, so the researchers examined changes in the ratio of mid-week trips originating in the early afternoon (12–3:59 PM) and the late afternoon/early evening (4–7:59 PM).

The research paper includes a clear shift in the temporal distribution of PM trip-making, with relatively more late PM peak period trip-making prior to the pandemic, and more early PM peak trip-making in 2021. The peak afternoon/evening trip-making hour shifted from 5–5:59 PM to 3–3:59 PM. The researchers also found that afternoon/evening trip-making each year is largely explained by three workplace-area/school-area factors: (1) the number of schoolchildren in a block group (earlier); (2) block groups with large shares of potential remote workers (earlier), and (3) block groups with large shares of low-wage jobs and workers of color (later, except for Black workers in 2021). The team found the earlier shift in PM peak travel between pre- and late-pandemic periods to be explained most by (1) higher shares of potential remote workers and (2) higher shares of low-wage jobs and workers of color. These findings suggest that the rise of working from home has likely led to a shift in PM peak travel earlier in the afternoon when school chauffeuring trips are most common. This is especially true for low-income workers and workers of color.

policy brief

Did COVID-19 Fundamentally Reshape Telecommuting in California?

Abstract

Health concerns and government restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp increase in telecommuting (i.e., doing paid work at home or possibly an alternate worksite). In addition to reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT), decreasing energy use, and lowering emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHG), telecommuting may offer numerous other co-benefits, including increasing the worker pool, decreasing time and costs associated with travel, improving work-life balance, and decreasing stress. It may also stimulate greater use of non-motorized and active modes of travel (e.g., walking, biking, taking transit). However, telecommuting (especially during the pandemic) may also affect remote workers’ opportunities for promotion and ties with colleagues, health, work-life balance for families with children (childcare and schools did not operate normally during the pandemic), and even work productivity. It may also increase commuting length because telecommuters tend to live in more suburban areas, usually associated with fewer transit options and a higher likelihood of car use. While a large body of literature on telecommuting existed before COVID-191, this research looked at how the frequency of telecommuting changed in California during the pandemic, and how it may evolve. Whereas most previous research relied on non-random samples, the dataset used for this research was collected at the end of May 2021 by Ipsos, which randomly sampled Californian members of KnowledgePanel©, is the largest probability-based online panel in the nation, so the results are generalizable to California’s population. Quantifying changes in telecommuting is important for updating sustainable community strategies created by Metropolitan Transportation Organizations and gauging telecommuting’s likely contribution to meeting California’s GHG reduction targets. Moreover, analyzing telecommuting frequency for different socio-economic groups and occupations should help policymakers understand the long-term impacts of the pandemic on different segments of the labor market.

research report

Barriers to Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Transportation Part 2: Investigating Evolving Travel Behaviors in the Post-Pandemic Period in California

Publication Date

May 1, 2024

Author(s)

Basar Ozbilen, Siddhartha Gulhare, Keita Makino, Aurojeet Jena, Xiatian Iogansen, Patrick Loa, Yongsung Lee, Giovanni Circella

Abstract

During the early months of the pandemic, stay-at-home orders and concerns about infection catalyzed a shift toward online activities, such as remote work and e-shopping, resulting in a significant decrease in conventional travel. However, as the effects of the pandemic diminished, the pandemic-induced online activities began to subside, and conventional travel started to rebound. To understand evolving travel-related activities spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at ITS-Davis conducted four waves of mobility surveys in California between Spring 2020 and Fall 2023. Key findings from the analysis of these data reveal that remote work and a combination of remote work and physical commuting (i.e., hybrid work) emerge as an enduring outcome of the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated the rise of e-shopping, both for grocery and non-grocery purchases, with findings demonstrating the critical influence of socio-demographic factors, including age, gender, and income, on e-shopping adoption and frequency. The findings show that socio-demographic factors such as work status, income level, and work arrangements are associated with household vehicle ownership changes and individual vehicle miles traveled (VMT). In particular, an increase in commute frequency reduces the likelihood of vehicle shedding (i.e., getting rid of a vehicle), while amplifying the likelihood of vehicle acquisition. In the meantime, remote workers exhibit lower commuting VMT but higher non-commuting VMT compared to hybrid workers. The findings demonstrate a similarity between the percentage of respondents who used public transit, bikes, e-bikes, and e-scooters for commuting and non-commuting trips to some degree between 2019 and 2023.

presentation

Understanding the “New Normal:” Activity and Mobility Patterns of Low-Income and Disadvantaged Communities in the Era of Hybrid Work and High Gas Prices

presentation

New Insights into how Micromobility Services Affect Vehicle Miles Traveled: Evidence from the American Micromobility Panel

published journal article

Telecommuting and Travel during COVID-19: An Exploratory Analysis across Different Population Geographies in the U.S.A.

Abstract

This study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on telecommuting (working from home) and travel during the first year of the pandemic in the U.S.A. (from March 2020 to March 2021), with a particular focus on examining the variation in impact across different U.S. geographies. We divided 50 U.S. states into several clusters based on their geographic and telecommuting characteristics. Using K-means clustering, we identified four clusters comprising 6 small urban states, 8 large urban states, 18 urban-rural mixed states, and 17 rural states. Combining data from multiple sources, we observed that nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce worked from home during the pandemic, which was six times higher than in the pre-pandemic period, and that these fractions varied across the clusters. More people worked from home in urban states compared with rural states. As well as telecommuting, we examined several activity travel trends across these clusters: reduction in the number of activity visits; changes in the number of trips and vehicle miles traveled; and mode usage. Our analysis showed there was a greater reduction in the number of workplace and nonworkplace visits in urban states compared with rural states. The number of trips in all distance categories decreased except for long-distance trips, which increased during the summer and fall of 2020. The changes in overall mode usage frequency were similar across urban and rural states with a large drop in ride-hailing and transit use. This comprehensive study can provide a better understanding of the regional variation in the impact of the pandemic on telecommuting and travel, which can facilitate informed decision-making.