New transportation networks facilitate mobility and may also spur economic development. This was the case with the construction of railway and highway networks in the U.S. during the late 19th and mid-20th century, respectively. Over the past decades, a new transportation technology—high-speed rail (HSR)—has had a profound impact on urban-regional accessibility and intercity travel across Europe and East and South-East Asia. A growing literature shows that HSR systems can also benefit local and regional economies. But the economic and spatial impacts of HSR have been varied and are largely contingent on a variety of factors, as well as local planning and policy. As California is in the process of building its own HSR network, it is important to review the experience of established HSR networks abroad to understand the possible economic effects that HSR can have on regional and local economies. While the impacts of California’s HSR plan on job creation in local markets (e.g., the construction sector) and on the travel sector (e.g., forecasts for HSR travel demand) have been investigated, the possible indirect impacts on land values, tourism, firm location, and local and regional development, among others, have not garnered enough attention. This study will provide guidance for the development of California HSR by undertaking a comprehensive literature review of the economic impacts of existing HSR systems and conducting case studies of HSR station-cities in Europe. The literature review will identify the prerequisites necessary for certain positive economic outcomes for different types of station-cities. The research team will examine the impacts of HSR on construction jobs, but also on post-construction job growth, firm relocation, residential and commercial development, tourism, and population growth. The team will select several individual case studies representing different city typologies with input from the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) and from the study’s advisory panel. The case studies will focus on station-cities that have experienced significant economic benefits since the initiation of HSR to identify how and why these benefits have occurred.

While the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected travel and transportation systems, driving has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, even as a significantly larger share of the workforce works from home full- or part-time. However, there have been significant changes in the timing and patterns of car travel since before the pandemic. Moreover, public transit systems have been especially hard hit, and riders have proven slow to return. While transit use by those unable to drive (who are more likely poor, immigrants, people of color, and/or disabled) has substantially recovered since the shutdowns in the spring of 2020, daily commuting to and from major employment centers collapsed and is just beginning to recover. The shifts in motor vehicle travel and the more dramatic changes in public transit use are both likely related to workplace changes, as the number of remote and hybrid workers has increased. The longer-term effects of the pandemic on travel remain uncertain, as do the appropriate policy responses to changing traffic patterns broadly, and to depressed transit ridership specifically. Public transit is a key transportation pillar of California’s climate and equity goals, which will be harder to meet with driving up and transit riding down.

To examine late-pandemic shifts in trip timing, this project analyzed smartphone location data to track the location and timing of vehicle trips on streets and highways in Greater Los Angeles. Specifically, this study compares the average number of trip origins for each hour of the day in all 10,783 census block groups in Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura counties in October 2019 and October 2021. The project then estimated a series of statistical models to examine the factors associated with both the levels of and changes in the timing of afternoon peak-period trip-making. Following an initial analysis, this project focused on shifts in early (12 p.m.–3:59 p.m.) and late (4 p.m.–7:59 p.m.) afternoon trip-making between fall 2019 and fall 2021. The primary data comes from StreetLight, a location analytics company that provides travel datasets collected from mobile phones, GPS receivers, and other network-enabled devices. This data was augmented with information from the U.S. Census, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Origin and Destination Employment Statistics (LODES), and the U.S. Department of Education.