About UCLA ITS Staff

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far UCLA ITS Staff has created 20 blog entries.

Student award shines light on school transportation issues

by Katrina DelosoUCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs graduate Samuel Speroni MURP ‘20, has been awarded the Neville A. Parker Award for best capstone project for his research on ride-hailing as school transportation for vulnerable student populations.Speroni worked with the ride-hailing service HopSkipDrive to analyze whether new mobility options could offer comparable school transportation options to foster youth, homeless students, and students with disabilities. His capstone project was supported by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.“I’m honored to receive this award, and I’m optimistic that it signals a larger recognition of school transportation’s importance in the overall study of transportation issues,” said Speroni, who is currently pursuing a doctorate in urban planning at UCLA.Although school attendance is mandatory, California school districts are not required to provide school transportation — and in the state’s metropolitan areas, there is almost no yellow school bus service. This creates inequities for vulnerable student populations and students from low-income and minority communities, further perpetuating the educational achievement gap. Speroni analyzed highschoolers’ school-bound trips through HopSkipDrive, which contracts with Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to provide transportation to school for select Los Angeles [...]

By |2021-01-06T14:20:10-08:00January 6th, 2021|Categories: Awards, People|Tags: |
Read More

Transfers Issue 6 available now

Transfers Magazine, the biannual digital magazine of the Pacific Southwest Region UTC edited by a team of UCLA faculty, staff and students, released its latest issue last month. Our writers take on some of the biggest challenges we have faced as a society this year, from climate change to racial injustice to the COVID-19 pandemic. These problems show up in our transportation work in ways big and small, and require us to harness our expertise across issue areas. Transfers is one effort towards sharing knowledge to collectively develop the critical solutions that we need. Our editor-in-chief, Michael Manville, wrote: What makes these Transfers articles, however, is less the urgency of the subjects and more what the authors bring to them: a commitment to clarity, reason and evidence. Transfers is premised on the idea that solutions do exist to our problems, and that careful research, translated into respectful and generous prose, can help us find those solutions and usher them toward reality. Please check out the articles from the latest issue. Editor’s Note Michael Manville Bearing the Brunt of Expanding E-Commerce: Logistics Sprawl, Goods Movement, and Environmental Justice Communities of color face disproportionate burdens from living near warehouses Quan Yuan How [...]

By |2021-01-06T14:20:22-08:00December 4th, 2020|Categories: News|
Read More

International Study on Women and Ride-Hailing Wins Award

Fariba Siddiq is leveraging her cross-cultural knowledge to study gender differences in ride-hailing. Siddiq, who was born and raised in Bangladesh, is researching ride-hailing experiences across genders in two cities: Los Angeles and Dhaka, Bangladesh. In her study, she’ll explore how ride-hailing impacts mobility and access to opportunities for women in both countries — before and after COVID-19. “As mobility decreases for many during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s critical to analyze how changes in travel behaviors have impacted the most vulnerable, particularly women,” said Siddiq, who is currently pursuing a doctorate in urban planning from UCLA. “Notably, I’m interested in learning how the introduction of ride-hailing in multiple cultural contexts has had an effect on access for women,” she said. In recognition of this work, the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations recently honored Siddiq with the Lee Schipper Scholarship Award. Siddiq was one of three international PhD candidates who study transportation to receive the prestigious recognition. The Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency seeks to recognize students every year who continue Lee Schipper’s policy work in sustainable transportation and energy efficiency. Schipper served as an international physicist, researcher, musician, and co-founder of EMBARQ, known today as [...]

By |2020-12-15T17:45:49-08:00November 30th, 2020|Categories: Awards, New Mobility, People|
Read More

Unequal access to remote work during the pandemic

Work from home significantly reduces the risk of contracting COVID-19, yet the ability to telecommute is starkly divided along lines of race, income, and educational attainment. Those unable to work remotely face higher rates of COVID-19, job loss, and lost wages. In a new brief by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, authors Rosalie Singerman Ray, postdoctoral research associate at the University of Connecticut, and Paul Ong, UCLA research professor and center director, used U.S. Census data from the weekly Household Pulse Survey to examine the relationships between remote work, employment status, and access to work along racial, income, and other systematic disparities. Their findings provide clear insight on what was broadly known: The pandemic is worsening existing race and class disparities. Access to remote work reduces job displacement, yet after controlling for income and education, Asian, Black, and Hispanic workers are significantly less likely than their white counterparts to switch to remote work. This is compounded by race-based disparities in income and educational status, factors which also impact ability to work remotely. Ability to work from home rises steadily as income and education increase. For example, 11% of those with less than a high school diploma and 12% of [...]

By |2020-12-04T15:10:54-08:00November 23rd, 2020|Categories: Access to Opportunities|
Read More

Pricing roads: Learning from gasoline shortages

In a new essay from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, urban planning associate professor Michael Manville uses the gasoline shortage of the 1970s to explain what happens when goods are underpriced and explore how the country today can solve its congestion problem by accurately pricing its roads. On Aug. 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced that he was freezing all wages, prices, and rents for 90 days to combat inflation in the country. As a result, gas prices were artificially low and gas stations around the country experienced extreme shortages. Americans waited in long lines for gas — sometimes for hours — and some even resorted to violent confrontations with other drivers over gas. Because of the low prices, Manville said, there was no incentive for producers to make more gas and for consumers to reduce “panic buying” when they could get a hold of it. However, even with nationwide gas shortages, the public was avidly opposed to raising gas prices, similar to the public’s attitude toward pricing roads today. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter asked Congress to remove pricing controls and allowed gasoline prices to “do their work.” Since then, Americans have not seen gasoline shortages and [...]

By |2020-11-30T12:08:06-08:00November 18th, 2020|Categories: Traffic|
Read More

UCLA Arrowhead Series available for on-demand learning

The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies recently held the virtual UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium focused on transportation conditions before, during and after COVID-19. During the 10 sessions, speakers addressed the struggles transportation agencies have faced in the current pandemic, along with systemic inequities in access to transportation and best practices for moving forward. Event recordings are available for up to 13 hours of free on-demand AICP credits. The UCLA Arrowhead Symposium hosts leaders and stakeholders from the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors for thoughtful discussion around the connections and conflicts between transportation, land use, and the environment. Below is a recap of each of the Arrowhead sessions. If you missed any sessions, feel free to watch via the UCLA ITS YouTube channel. Interested in professional development? The series can provide up to 13 hours of on-demand learning AICP CM credits. >> How Can We Do Better? Limits on Black Mobility in Transportation (1.75 CM units) Charles Brown, senior research specialist and adjunct professor at the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University, and Tamika Butler, Esq., founder of Tamika L. Butler Consulting, LLC., hosted a group of Black transportation professionals — Veronica Davis, co-founder of Nspiregreen, LLC; Nedra Deadwyler, CEO [...]

By |2020-11-23T12:21:40-08:00November 9th, 2020|Categories: Events|
Read More

100 years of fighting traffic in LA

During the pandemic, traffic congestion lessened in Los Angeles. But if history is any indication, soon enough it will return.  In a new report by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Politics, A Century of Fighting Traffic Congestion in Los Angeles (1920-2020), authors distinguished professor emeritus Martin Wachs, UCLA History doctoral student Peter Sebastian Chesney, and MURP graduate student Yu Hong Hwang detail how Los Angeles’ constant battles with congestion have plagued the city for nearly 100 years.  From 1920-2020, Los Angeles has promised to reduce congestion via constructing more roadways, dispersing residents outside the city and creating technological innovations that would direct traffic more smoothly. Yet, each of these innovations failed to reduce the persistent flow of traffic in the city’s roadways. As a solution, the researchers suggest that the region seriously consider dynamic road pricing. They argue that this solution complements previous attempts at fixing congestion. Above all, it will improve mobility both for car and transit users, reduce the environmental harm congestion has brought to underprivileged communities and will charge rich and poor people in fairer ways for their transportation choices. Related Items Report Timeline Podcast with the authors [...]

By |2021-01-08T10:40:51-08:00October 17th, 2020|Categories: Traffic|
Read More

Urban Planning graduate conducts year’s best academic work

A research project on Los Angeles’ parking minimums received the American Planning Association Los Angeles’ 2020 award for academic excellence for work conducted as part of master’s capstone project. Titled “Parking? Lots! Parking Over the Minimum in Los Angeles,” Katelyn Stangl MURP ‘19 explored developer responses to parking minimums in the city. Critics of parking minimums often say they require developers to build an excess of parking because the minimums are calculated in response to peak demand needs. In order to help pave the way for parking minimum reform, Stangl set out to investigate why a developer would build over parking minimums. Among Stangl’s findings were: Developments with the largest parking reductions built less parking overall but more relative to their reduced parking minimums. Developers also tend to provide extra parking in dense areas where people are more likely to ride transit or travel by foot. The main reasons developers build more parking is due to perceived market demand, financial pressure, or community opposition. Click here to see recommendations based on this research  Among the other APA Los Angeles award recipients were the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with the landmark award to mark 50 years of UCLA’s urban [...]

By |2020-11-30T12:11:37-08:00July 2nd, 2020|Categories: Awards, Parking, People|
Read More

Transfers Magazine – Issue 5

Transfers Issue 5 Online Now The latest issue of Transfers Magazine, the biannual digital magazine of the Pacific Southwest Region UTC edited by a team of UCLA faculty, staff and students, came out last week. In our current uncertain time, we’ve continued to stay committed to sharing the latest in transportation research. This issue covers important topics such as improving accessibility for pedestrians, how parking reform can alleviate urban heat, and rewording coverage of vehicle crashes. During COVID-19, we’ve seen major changes in how people travel ― or don’t. But sooner or later, we will return to commuting and traveling from place to place. As our editor-in-chief, Michael Manville, put it in his note: Eventually, however, the pandemic will end. When it does, the world will need wise transportation policy. Transportation agencies will need to salvage their tattered budgets. Transit operators will need to make their vehicles safe for passengers and operators. And we all, hopefully, will need to rethink the transportation system we had before the virus put it on pause. Please check out the articles from the latest issue.  Editor’s Note Michael Manville The 30-Minute City Small changes in infrastructure could yield major benefits for pedestrians David Levinson [...]

By |2020-11-30T12:18:25-08:00June 3rd, 2020|Categories: News|
Read More
CONTACT
Institute of Transportation Studies
UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
2381 Public Affairs Building
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656
(310) 562-7356
Copyright © by the Regents of the University of California
Go to Top