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policy brief
In 2017 and 2018, California was severely impacted by a number of devastating wildfires that required thousands of people to evacuate. These evacuations were hampered by poor communication, traffic congestion, and transportation and shelter resource deficiencies. To ensure that all citizens have both transportation and shelter in evacuations, agencies must consider alternative strategies for expanding resources, such as leveraging the sharing economy.
policy brief
In California, Senate Bill 375 mandates regional planning organizations align their transportation plans with sustainable land use and development strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In response, the Southern California Association of Governments’ 2016 Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Community Strategy directs nearly 50% of housing and employment growth between 2010 and 2040 into walkable and compact neighborhoods within a one-half mile walking distance from well-serviced transit stops. This approach to land use development can encourage shorter driving trips, greater transit usage, and increased walking and cycling as a result of daily activity destinations being clustered near residential and work locations.1Another bi-product and benefit of compact and accessible communities may be improving gender equality related to travel and activity patterns. Prior research shows segregated and dispersed land uses (i.e., suburban sprawl) can exacerbate gender disparities in daily household travel by separating the public and private realms, and can also constrain women to their immediate neighborhoods.2,3 In contrast, neighborhoods with pedestrian accessible mixes-use centers have been shown to help counter social isolation of women in suburbia.4In addition, compact communities with denser land use and better transit service has been shown to reduce the disproportionate amount of chauffeuring women conduct on behalf of the household.
research report
In many evacuations including wildfire evacuations, public agencies often do not have enough resources to evacuate and shelter all citizens. Consequently, the research team proposes that the sharing economy, through private companies and/or private citizens, could be leveraged in disasters for transportation and shelter resources. To assess this feasibility, the team distributed surveys to individuals impacted by three major wildfires in California: 1) the 2017 October Northern California Wildfires (n=79), 2) the 2017 December Southern California Wildfires (n=226), and 3) the 2018 Carr Wildfire (n=284). Using these data, the researchers find that private citizens are moderately to highly likely to share transportation and sheltering resources in future disasters, but numerous reservations persist about sharing. The team also finds significant spare capacity in evacuating vehicles and potential homes. To supplement this work, the researchers also conducted four focus groups (n=37) of vulnerable populations to determine the benefits and limitations of a sharing economy strategy in terms of equity. Groups included low-income (2017 December Southern California Wildfires), older adults (2017 October Northern California Wildfires), individuals with disabilities (2017 October Northern California Wildfires), and Spanish-speaking (2018 Mendocino Complex Wildfire). The team finds that while severe equity limitations exist, groups were able to develop several recommendations for successfully leveraging sharing economy resources for the general population and their specific vulnerable group. The research paper concludes with several local agencies and statewide recommendations for building a sharing economy framework for California to prepare for future evacuations.
research report
Traffic signals, while serving an important function in coordinating vehicle movements through intersections, also cause frequent stops and delays, particularly when they are not properly timed. Such stops and delays contribute to a significant amount of fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The recent development of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology provides new opportunities to enable better control of vehicles and intersections, which in turn reduces fuel consumption and emissions. In this paper, the research team proposes platoon trajectory optimization (PTO) to minimize the total fuel consumption of a CAV platoon through a signalized intersection. In this approach, all CAVs in one platoon are considered as a whole, that is, all other CAVs follow the trajectory of the leading one with a time delay and minimum safety gap, which is enabled by vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Moreover, the leading CAV in the platoon learns of the signal timing plan just after it enters the approach segment through vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. The team compares the platoon trajectory optimization control with the other two controls, in which the leading vehicle adopts the optimal trajectory (LTO) or drives with maximum speed (AT), respectively, and the other vehicles follow the leading vehicle with a simplified Gipps’ car-following model. Furthermore, the research paper extends the controls to multiple platoons by considering the interactions between the two platoons. The numerical results demonstrate that platoon trajectory optimization has better performance than optimal trajectory and maximum speed, particularly when CAVs have enough space and travel time to smooth their trajectories. The reduction of travel time and fuel consumption can be as high as 40% and 30% on average, respectively, in the studied cases, which shows the great potential of CAV technology in reducing congestion and the negative environmental impact of automobile transportation.
research report
California’s Freeway Service Patrol (FSP) is a congestion mitigation program managed in partnership with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), California Highway Patrol, and Caltrans on California’s urban freeways. The program utilizes a fleet of roving tow and service trucks designed to reduce traffic congestion by efficiently getting disabled vehicles running again, or by quickly towing those vehicles off of the freeway to a designated safe location. Quickly removing motorists and their disabled vehicles from the freeway reduces the chances of further incidents caused by onlookers and impatient drivers. In addition, FSP helps save fuel and reduce air-polluting emissions by reducing stop-and-go traffic. California’s Road Repair and Accountability Act (SB 1) invests $5.4 billion annually over the next decade to help fix and repair California’s transportation system. It will address a backlog of repairs and upgrades while ensuring a cleaner and more sustainable travel network for the future. California’s Freeway Service Patrol received SB 1 funding to expand its service to motorists across California’s congested freeways. In its first year of implementation (fiscal year 2018-19), SB 1 funded FSP program expansion and provided over 118,000 dollars of assistance to California’s motorists. The SB 1 funded FSP expansions provided almost $47M dollars in benefits to motorists while costing the State under $9M. On average, the SB 1-funded FSP expansions provided 5 times as much benefit to California’s motorists as these expansions cost the State.
research report
This report examines whether being more mobile is associated with decisions by older people to remain in the active workforce after normal retirement age. Mobility includes having access to and the capacity to drive cars being transit accessible or being able to walk to work or work at home. The report presents findings in three sections and concludes, based on research conducted thus far, that there are indications of causal associations between mobility and delayed retirement. The report includes a review of the literature linking mobility, travel by the elderly, and retirement decision-making. Following the review of the literature is a quantitative analysis of data from the California Household Travel Survey, including mathematical models of relationships between mobility and the propensity of older Californians to remain in the active workforce. The final component of the research findings is a summary of the results of qualitative research consisting of focus groups and interviews. While the findings are not conclusive they show relationships that indicate that further research, particularly using longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data, are warranted. After presenting findings, the report concludes with recommendations for further research.
white paper
How, and how effectively, different electric vehicle (EV) related policies will work is an immediate and important question for California as the state updates its electric vehicle policies. Adding urgency, Assembly Bill (AB) 615, which was signed by the Governor, requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to produce a report by December 2018 on related topics, in consultation with the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies (UC ITS). Senate Bill (SB) 498, also signed, also requires CARB reporting with somewhat different but overlapping topics. The need is to define the state of the research on policies to support electric vehicle deployment in a manner that is directly usable by California in updating policies. The specific need for CARB is material estimates of these factors (called out in AB 615): impact of income caps, increased rebates for low-income consumers, and increased outreach on the electric vehicle market, as well as a quantification of emissions reductions attributable to the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project.This white paper is one in a series summarizing recent research findings for the state of California. The topic of the series is evaluating the important components of electric vehicle adoption and its effects. The goals of these white papers are to: 1. Synthesize the best published and ongoing research available on each topic; 2. Highlight important research gaps and propose areas for future research; 3. Provide the reader with a framework for understanding the various dimensions of each topic; 4. Make a clear link between research findings and policy implications, if possible; and 5. Be accessible to an informed and interested, but non-technical audience.
published journal article
We study infrastructure-aided data communication networking for autonomous transportation systems. The infrastructure consists of Roadside Units (RSU) which are placed along the side of a highway segment and are connected by optical fiber. The infrastructure provides full communication coverage of the segment’s vehicles. We present a data networking protocol enabling packet flows to be disseminated to all vehicles within a specified span. We study the performance behavior of the synthesized data network as a function of the number of employed RSU nodes. For each case, we configure the structure of the medium access control scheduling scheme, and configure the employed Modulation Coding Schemes (MCS) and corresponding data rates, the transmit power levels, and the spatial-reuse factors. We aim to obtain high throughput rates under prescribed packet delay limits. In addition, we impose high packet successful reception rate requirements to ensure reliable dissemination of packet flows.
conference paper published journal article policy brief
Transportation infrastructure funding is falling short at the federal and state level, in part because the fuel tax mechanism is outdated. The Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (SB1)1 provides additional revenue for transportation infrastructure improvements by increasing California’s gasoline and diesel taxes, and introducing additional registration fees for vehicles. This includes a new $100 annual fee for zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) because they do not use gasoline and therefore do not contribute towards the maintenance of California’s roadways. California is now one of 19 states that have assessed fees on Battery-Electric Vehicles (BEVs) or Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).
To gain a better understanding of the trade-offs and implications of instituting a new fee on ZEVs, the California Legislature requested the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis to make “recommendations on potential methodologies to raise revenue from zero-emission and low-emission vehicle owners to achieve the state’s transportation electrification, clean air, and climate targets established under law while also ensuring those vehicle owners pay their fair share of any costs borne by motorists to fund improvements to the transportation system.” Key findings from this research are presented below with a full report available at: https://www.ucits.org/research-project/assessing-alternatives-to-californias-electric-vehicle-registration-fee/
