Arrowhead 2002 |Tackling Traffic Congestion

The 12th Annual UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium on the Transportation – Land Use – Environment Connection: “Tackling Traffic Congestion”

Held October 20-22 at UCLA’s Lake Arrowhead Conference Center

Program

Presentations

Proceedings

Traffic congestion is among the most enduring and vexing public issues.  Congestion was the focus of the first American planning conference in the early 1900s, and public opinion polls today consistently rank congestion as one of the most significant problems of metropolitan life.  Many believe that chronic traffic congestion – on streets and highways, and at airports and seaports – is a significant drag on the economy, costing American households and businesses billions of dollars each year.   Vehicles stuck in traffic increase emissions, exacerbating air quality problems.  And some argue that time spent in congestion exacts a psychological toll on travelers, which may contribute to stress-related health problems.

 The 2002 UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium focuses on traffic congestion: How is it defined?  What are its causes?  What are its economic, social, and environmental consequences?  And, importantly, what are its remedies?  This last question will be given particular attention because the proposed solutions to chronic congestion are many, though consensus about which to pursue has proven elusive.  The most obvious solution has been to increase the capacity of the transportation system – more highway lanes, more parking spaces, more harbor berths, more runways, and so on.  But a growing number of critics of such “supply-side” solutions argue that increasing capacity encourages more travel, and does little to reduce congestion in the long run.  Others call for transportation capacity expansion, but of alternative travel modes: increase public transit instead of highways, add high-speed rail instead of expanding airports, etc.  Some see the congestion problem rooted in patterns of development, and the solution in changing those patterns.  Finally, others argue that congestion results from the economically and environmentally inappropriate pricing of scarce transportation capacity. 

 The presentations and discussions at this symposium focus primarily on metropolitan traffic with an emphasis on the potential, and limits, of a wide range of congestion mitigation strategies in a variety of settings.

2002 Sponsors

LEAD SPONSORS

California Department of Transportation

University of California Transportation Center

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

CO-SPONSORS

Automobile Club of Southern California

Bay Area Air Quality Management District

California Energy Commission

County of Orange

Federal Highway Administration

League of California Cities – Orange County Division

Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Orange County Transportation Authority

RIDES for Bay Area Commuters, Inc.

Riverside County Transportation Commission

San Bernardino Associated Governments

San Diego Association of Governments

Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission

South Coast Air Quality Management District

Southern California Association of Governments

Southern California Edison

Southern California Gas Company