research report
The Sidewalking toolkit supports youth mobility and youth agency by sharing effective, design-based strategies for engaging young people in envisioning their own mobility futures. This guide was created to help planners, designers, policymakers, and advocates who are already invested in supporting safe, social mobility options for youth, and who are looking for effective strategies to involve young people directly in planning and design decisions regarding their urban mobility.
book/book chapter
The COVID-19 crisis elevated the importance of private vehicles. The pandemic drove riders off public transit and spawned additional car-based activities such as drive-through testing and vaccinations and curbside pick-ups. Yet millions of low-income and non-white households do not own vehicles. This book chapter draws on a unique credit panel dataset to examine automobile debt and delinquency in California. In particular, it examines whether automobile debt patterns during the pandemic differed from those during and coming out of the Great Recession (December 2007–June 2009). It also analyzes the response to the COVID-19 recession across neighborhoods by income and race.
The paper finds that the number of automobile loans per borrower declined. While the automobile debt burden (the ratio between total automobile debt and aggregate income) also declined, it fell far less during the pandemic than during the Great Recession. Moreover, automobile loan delinquencies spiked during the Great Recession but instead continued to drop during the pandemic. Finally, the COVID-19 crisis affected consumers differently by both race and income. Automobile debt burden rose in low-income, Latino/a, and Black neighborhoods, a pattern that preceded but continued unabated during the pandemic. The findings suggest that COVID-19 relief may have helped some families manage their automobile-related expenditures. However, other factors, such as increasing automobile prices, likely contributed to growing debt burdens, a potential source of financial distress.
published journal article published journal article research report
This report quantifies the cost of daily travel needs for affordable housing residents in San Diego, California, especially seniors aged 62 and older, in two ways. First, it analyzes their trip travel time for the entire San Diego region using activity-based model (ABM) data. Second, it summarizes results from surveys of residents in six affordable housing buildings, three of which provide supportive housing to seniors. Overall, this research finds that affordable housing residents use public transit more often than those who have access to a car. But traveling by public transit takes much longer on public transit than traveling by personal vehicle. Survey respondents under age 62 expressed greater dissatisfaction with the costs of public transit ridership, compared to seniors, and were also more likely to express dissatisfaction if they were working. Seniors were more likely to express dissatisfaction with the conditions of public transit stops.
research report
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on public transit ridership in the United States, especially for rail transit. Land use, development density, and the pedestrian environment are strongly associated with station-level transit ridership. This study examines how these characteristics affect transit ridership pre- and post-COVID and how they differ across station types based on longitudinal data for 242 rail stations belonging to Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, Sacramento Regional Transit, and LA Metro between 2019 and 2021.
The research team found an overall 72% decrease in station-level ridership, but changes were not uniform. Station areas with a higher number of low-income workers and more retail or entertainment jobs tend to have lower ridership declines, while areas with a large number of high-income workers, high-wage jobs, and higher job accessibility by transit had more ridership losses. When comparing station area ridership and activity changes based on mobile phone user data, ridership declined more drastically than activity across all four rail systems, which implies that rail transit riders switched to other modes of transportation when accessing the station areas. Given these findings, it is likely that rail transit services oriented toward commute travel, especially core station areas with jobs for higher-income workers, will continue to have an uneven recovery, posing critical implications for transit resilience planning and equity in the post-pandemic era. Considering sources of funding other than passenger fares to sustain rail transit, strategizing to reinvent and reinforce downtowns as destinations, and shifting rail transit services to appeal to non-commute travel can be promising strategies to support rail transit.
policy brief policy brief
This brief provides an overview of microtransit service as deployed across California. Microtransit is a technology-enabled transit service that typically employs shuttles or vans to provide on-demand transportation with dynamic routing. While many rides are dispatched and paid via a smartphone, many services also provide a telephone booking option. A few services accept cash payment and street hails (similar to taxis). Variations of microtransit can include fixed schedules and routes and larger or smaller vehicles. Typically, microtransit services are operated by or provided on behalfof a government entity or nonprofit organization, although privately operated microtransit programs also might exist.
published journal article
Many methods exist for engaging experts in interactive groups to explore, clarify, and/or decide on various issues. In an investigation of four possible future scenarios concerning transportation and land use in California, researchers at UCLA developed a novel “hybrid policy Delphi” method for use with a panel of 18 experts. Through this process, panel members discussed and reflected on the scenarios in multiple ways. The scenario they considered most desirable they also deemed least likely to occur, and they foresaw the likely trajectory of California transportation and land use leading to less desirable scenarios. The mix of discussion and questionnaires traded the benefit of anonymity for the benefit of exploratory, interactive discussion. In addition, the use of surveys before and after meetings allowed the research team to track changes in panel opinion on a central question and discuss the survey results at meetings, at the cost of greater administrative effort.
published journal article
Most U.S. metropolitan areas developed alongside the automobile, producing neighborhoods of relatively low density. Consequently, access to opportunities in these neighborhoods is predicated on having an automobile, yet many households do not have the resources to purchase one outright, relying on automobile loans to spread out the purchase price. While automobile loans can enable automobile ownership, they also significantly increase the vehicle purchase price, particularly for non-white consumers subject to discriminatory lending practices.
This study uses data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel from Experian to examine the determinants and geography of automobile debt and its consequences in California, testing whether various automobile debt measures disproportionately affect non-white neighborhoods. It finds that, controlling for other factors associated with automobile lending including income, Black and Latino/a neighborhoods have higher total automobile debt, debt burdens (debt relative to income), and automobile loan delinquency rates. In particular, Latino/a neighborhoods shoulder significant automobile debt, while borrowers in Black neighborhoods have the highest delinquency rates. Factors associated with lower total automobile debt and automobile debt burden include better credit ratings, higher residential densities, urban locations, and proximity to rail stations.
published journal article research report
The historical impacts of transportation planning and investment have left lasting scars on communities of color and low-income communities. This report evaluates online equity tools that exist as spatial dashboards —i.e., interactive maps in which the parameters of interaction are controlled. Twelve tools ranging from the national to the local level were identified and qualitatively assessed for their ability to address conditions related to transportation equity. The evaluation focused on how each tool defines disadvantaged communities, the outcomes they measure (benefits, burdens, or other), their ease of use, and their ability to guide decisions about equity. The findings show a diversity of methods and metrics in defining disadvantage, with most relying on composite demographic indexes and comparative population thresholds. Tools most commonly provided accessibility metrics to assess transportation benefits, while incorporating a range of environmental and health indicators as burden measures. A minority of tools had integrated features to support planning or project implementation.
policy brief
Most residents of multifamily housing (MFH) and urban homes with only street parking (i.e., no garage or private driveway) do not have access to home electric vehicle (EV) charging. These residents rely primarily on public direct current fast charging (DCFC) stations where the price of electricity is not regulated and in turn more expensive compared to what a single-family household would pay.
This policy brief highlights findings from research that compared charging costs at public EV DCFC stations to the cost for single-family housing (SFH) residents charging at home for three California electric utility service areas and for three urban areas – Sacramento, San Diego, and San Jose. The research used a combination of observed pricing data from PlugShare, a crowd-sourced database of public EV charging, and public DCFC pricing data from electric vehicle service provider (EVSP) websites, as well as electric utility tariff information from their respective websites.
presentation published journal article
On-demand mobility services like bikesharing, scooter sharing, and transportation network companies (TNCs) are transforming travel by providing flexible, on-demand options that complement public transit and personal vehicles. Their rapid adoption, particularly in urban areas, is driven by affordability and convenience. The growth of ridesharing and TNCs offers an opportunity to reduce congestion, energy use, and emissions by encouraging pooled rides and reducing personal vehicle ownership. This research uses a survey of four California metropolitan regions to explore policy strategies that incentivize pooling. It highlights how frequent TNC users, particularly low-income individuals, rely on these services for essential trips and are more likely to consider pooling. Time and cost tradeoffs are also examined across different regions and demographics to inform policies aimed at increasing pooling through pricing, curb management, and promotional efforts.
