The UCLA Complete Streets Initiative, led by the Lewis Center with support from the Luskin Center, recently hosted its annual Complete Streets Conference. Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, gave a keynote lecture that culminated the day with inspiring stories from NYC.  This year’s conference focused on Pathways to Implementation, in response to the growing number of cities that are beginning to implement Complete Streets projects and move toward institutionalization.  The conference brought together 300 participants, which included researchers and practitioners leading the Complete Streets movement. The conference included panel discussions, breakout sessions, and dialogue with Commissioner Sadik-Khan. This year’s conference focused on Pathways to Implementation in response to the number of cities that have implemented or are beginning to implement projects on the ground.  Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, UCLA Luskin Associate Dean and Urban Planning Professor, detailed the results from a recently published report, Reclaiming the Right-of-Way: A Toolkit for Creating and Implementing Parklets. She highlighted the number of case studies[…]

The California Transportation Foundation released its annual awards on Wednesday, naming ACCESS Magazine, housed inside the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, as its Organization of the Year. The magazine reports on research funded by the University of California Transportation Center. “The Transportation Awards jury, made up of public and private sector transportation professionals, reviewed 118 nominations this year,” said Sarah West, CTF Executive Director. “Our selections represent the best of the projects, programs and people who made a positive difference for California transportation in 2012.” The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs houses ACCESS Magazine, one of the most widely read publications on transportation research. ACCESS translates academic research into readable prose, useful for policymakers and practitioners alike.  If you haven’t already, please sign up for a free online subscription at the ACCESS website. And tell your coworkers to sign up as well!

If city leaders clearly articulate a vision and pursue it in ways that rely on constant public engagement, transformational change is possible. That was the message delivered by New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan Feb. 28, as part of the UCLA Luskin Lecture Series. Sadik-Khan spoke to an audience of more than 200 transportation planners and advocates at the 2013 UCLA Complete Streets Conference, an annual gathering produced by the UCLA Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies. In a talk that touched on nearly every aspect of a “complete street” — pedestrians, bicycles, buses, plazas and parks, as well as private vehicles — Sadik-Khan reported on her five years as head of transportation in America’s largest city. Throughout her tenure, she said, change has been at the forefront of her job. “These streets have been unexamined for too long,” she said. “We should be designing streets for 2013, not 1963.” Sadik-Khan has overseen a major revitalization of the ways New Yorkers[…]

Lewis Center and Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) students took part in the ninth annual UCLA Luskin Day at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, February 8 to meet with and interview a panel of experts (including Lewis Center Advisory Board Members L.A. Deputy Mayor Borja Leon and Santa Monica Mayor Pam O’Connor) on the topic of  Full Speed Ahead: Creative Solutions to L.A.’s Transportation Needs. The event connected students from the School’s Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning departments with city and county leaders as well as representatives from the private and nonprofit sectors, to discuss this multi-faceted problem. The recent failure in the November 2012 general election of L.A.’s Measure J, which would have extended the half-cent sales tax approved in 2008 as Measure R for an additional 30 years, leaves open the question: What is the future of transportation funding in Los Angeles? Lewis Center Associate Director Allison Yoh served as faculty advisor and moderated an open noontime discussion on solutions[…]

In a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, two “parklets,” or micro urban parks, were officially opened in downtown Los Angeles and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs had a hand in creating the new spaces. “This parklet is the first in the nation that is an active recreation parklet,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, associate dean of the UCLA Luskin School, who spoke at the ceremony. The parklet features bike equipment and a foosball table along with seating and vegetation. The two parklets on Spring St. were designed by the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council with support from Councilmember Jose Huizar and the L.A. Department of Transportation. The UCLA Luskin Complete Streets Initiative worked with these partners throughout the project phases and supported construction with a grant from the Rosaline & Arthur Gilbert Foundation. The two parklets are part of a larger roll-out of parklets opening this month in Los Angeles. The local parklet movement is guided by the parklet toolkit (PDF) authored by Loukaitou-Sideris, UCLA Complete[…]

UCLA Master of Urban and Regional Planning program student Drew Baldwin was recently quoted in a Daily Bruin story about ridesharing company Uber Technologies’ California operations. Baldwin explains that at first state officials were opposed to the company’s operations. Officials thought that Uber Technologies was not following the same standards as taxi and limousine companies. Ultimately, state officials decided to allow the company to operate. Baldwin states, “All of this is in the interest of public safety. It is not surprising that California operates on the spirit of regulation to ensure safety.” California officials only allowed Uber to operate if it followed regulations for safety, such as proof of insurance for drivers. To read the full article, click here.

Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs; then-MURP student Shira Bergstein; Dan Chatman, Berkeley Assistant Professor; and Berkeley graduate student April Mo, recently completed a study to examine whether the process of environmental reviews and approvals for infrastructure projects has proven to be quicker where Habitat Conservation Plans exist than has been the case where they do not. Habitat Conservation Plans set aside areas of land to protect the habitats of endangered and threatened species. Over the past decade, twenty or more large Habitat Conservation areas have been established in an effort to both preserve endangered environments and to facilitate the construction of important infrastructure like highways and transit routes, by “streamlining” the environmental review process that is required under the National Environmental Protection Act. The conservation areas provide for the mitigation of the environmental impacts of the infrastructure projects.

The UCLA Complete Streets Initiative recently was selected by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) to create a bicycle data clearinghouse in a partnered effort with Ryan Snyder Associates, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), and Kittleson and Associates. As a part of this multi-phase $150,000 project, UCLA will collect and standardize data for municipalities in Los Angeles County, and will create a Web-based, user-friendly map interface available to policymakers and the public. Such a bicycle data set will be the first of its kind in the county. The team of Lewis Center researchers includes Madeline Brozen and Norman Wong, Professor Rui Wang, and graduate students. Their effort builds upon the UCLA Lewis Center’s other Web-GIS interface projects including the California Land Opportunities Tracking System (CA-LOTS), a Web-GIS tool which allows planners and developers throughout the region to identify infill development opportunities in priority growth areas.

A new study examines travel of teens and young adults in an era of advanced communications technologies. Written by UCLA’s own Evelyn Blumenberg, Brian Taylor,Michael Smart, Kelcie Ralph, Madeline Wander, and Stephen Brumbaugh, the study was funded by both the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and the University of California Transportation Center. The researchers find that economic factors, first and foremost are behind the decline in solo driving among teens and young adults in recent years. Unemployment among teens and young adults is up dramatically in the Great Recession, and this has reduced access to vehicles, money to pay for driving, and the need to drive to jobs. Young people are still getting around, but more often by means other than driving. Interestingly, the researchers found that use of information and communications technologies was associated with slightly more travel, and not less. All of that talking, texting, and tweeting, in other words, is not substituting for travel.