Recently, Lewis Center Director Brian Taylor was quoted in a Los Angeles Times story on a new Caltrans study showing that Californians are growing less reliant on automobiles while walking, biking, and transit trips are on the rise. Click here for the full story and Professor Taylor’s comments.

Students in Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning are taking their shows on the road this Spring Break. In pursuit of independently organized projects, groups of students are traveling to Detroit, Mexico City, and Tokyo. The trips are designed to encourage a broader understanding of issues of urbanization, governance, policy, and social service. In Detroit, a group of 10 students will explore the consequences of the city’s bankruptcy on urban policy. During their time in the city they have meetings scheduled with a host of city officials, including agency heads, nonprofit leaders, and Mayor Mike Duggan. In their conversations, the students hope to uncover lessons of governing a city in crisis, resources available to city managers, and the role citizens can play in rebuilding an iconic city’s image. “Detroit represents the most extreme versions of problems in the urban core,” the students write on their trip blog. “This trip will serve to contextualize urban planning issues in the canonical distressed city.”[…]

The UCLA Complete Streets Initiative’s work on the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse project received both federal and local attention this week. Locally, the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is seeking a way to improve how traffic counts are done for cyclists and pedestrians. In its report to the City Council, the Department wrote that traffic counts that include metrics for cyclists and pedestrians will better support the prioritization of future transportation and infrastructure projects. Complete Streets Initiative staff advised LADOT how to adjust their current methodology to be consistent with the standards for counting and reporting set forth in the Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse. The council report acknowledged this partnership and assistance in developing a template and plans to use this template to enter count data into the Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse. The complete council report can be viewed here. “Having the City of Los[…]

View Voice of America’s video here.

Click here to view Supporting Complete Streets in Los Angeles County from Safe Routes to School in CA on Vimeo.

By Adeney Zo UCLA Luskin student writer A group of Urban Planning students looking to expand their knowledge and professional connections in the transportation world made the trip to the 93rd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington D.C., earlier this month. The TRB annual meeting is a massive event, with around 12,000 participants and 800 different sessions spanning the width and breadth of transportation studies each year. Attending this event offered the UCLA Luskin students an opportunity to meet a mix of professionals and academics working on issues and projects similar to their own. One student presenter, Jaimee Lederman, recalled, “This conference really gave me the chance to talk to people I normally couldn’t gain access to. For example, I had problems getting data from people in the insurance industry because they are not easy to contact, but there was a woman there who happened to be the head of an insurance company.” Fellow student Kelcie Ralph agreed that the networking opportunities[…]

Click here to view the LA Times article. Photo credit: (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / February 4, 2014)

Reclaiming the Right-of-Way, a comprehensive toolkit on planning methods to encourage walkability and complete streets design in neighborhoods, has been named a recipient of a National Planning Achievement Award for Best Practice, presented by the American Planning Association. The award is the latest in a string of honors for the toolkit, which is led by program manager Madeline Brozen and UCLA Luskin Urban Planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris through UCLA Luskin’s Complete Streets Initiative. Local and regional APA chapters had previously recognized the project’s contributions to planning theory and practice. In a letter supporting the project’s nomination, Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar called the toolkit “invaluable,” saying the toolkit encouraged the city to try new ideas and “helped the shift toward a healthier, more walkable and enriching public realm gain a stronger foothold in Los Angeles.” Similar letters of support came from the L.A. Department of Transportation and the City of Cincinnati. Though focused specifically on parklet development in Los[…]

The Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C. is always a reunion of sorts for UCLA students, faculty, and alumni who study transportation. The program is quite extensive, with nearly 800 sessions throughout the five-day meeting and over 12,000 transportation professionals in attendance. Amid these crowds, one could almost always find a fellow UCLA scholar within eyesight. UCLA sent presenters to 20 sessions this year, including a standing-room-only panel discussion on millenials and travel behavior, at which Professors Brian Taylor and Evelyn Blumenberg spoke. Over 150 guests packed into the annual “UCLA in DC” reception hosted by the Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies at La Tomate Bistro. Director Brian Taylor gave the door prizes, including the prize for most TRBs attended, which went to Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs, who has attended 50 TRBs. UCLA also had a cameo at the packed Six Minute Pitch session. In this competition, transportation entrepreneurs pitched their businesses to investors,[…]