Towards Evidence-Based Sustainable Communities: Report on Survey of Urban Sustainability Centers in U.S. Universities

Provides an overview of characteristics of urban sustainability research centers, including organizational structure, personnel capacity, finances, current objectives, and recent research topics. Considers policy implications

Not all sprawl - Evolution of employment centers in Los Angeles, 1980 - 2000

Are contemporary metropolitan regions becoming more dispersed? The collective set of urban models tells us two stories. The first is that changes in the structure of the economy, ever faster and cheaper information and communications technologies, and the dispersion of the labor force have broadened the scope of agglomeration economies. Hence employment will continue to decentralize. The alternative story argues that heavy reliance on face-to-face communication in the information economy, economies of scale and scope in infrastructure, and historical path dependence in urban spatial patterns suggest that highly localized agglomeration economies continue to exist. The purpose of our research is to establish robust empirical evidence that can help clarify the debate over the evolution of economic activity within a metropolitan area and provide the data that can be used to test the implications of many of the models that speak to urban dynamics. We examine changes in employment patterns in the Los Angeles region, from 1980 to 2000. As a rapidly growing, prototypically polycentric region, Los Angeles provides an interesting case study of spatial evolution. Using data from 1980, 1990 and 2000, we identify employment centers and describe spatial trends in the pattern of employment inside and outside these centers. Our findings point to three trends in the evolution of the topography of employment. First, there is a remarkable degree of stability in the system of centers. While a small number of centers appear and disappear, the large majority of centers are evident throughout the three sample periods. This stability does not mean that the distribution of employment has been static, however. The second trend is a marked spread in the average distance of jobs from the traditional core: the average job in 2000 was significantly further from downtown than in 1980. This decentralization is not simply dispersion, but rather both deconcentration and concentration. That is, while the most rapid job growth has occurred in the outer suburbs, suburban employment centers have become more numerous, larger and more concentrated. These trends appear to defy simple models of urban evolution and call for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics underlying these trends.

Climate and transportation policy sequencing in California and Quebec

We compare flexible low-carbon regulations in the transportation sector and their interaction and sequencing with greenhouse gas emissions trading systems in California and Quebec. As momentum builds for greater climate action, it is necessary to better understand how carbon markets and other low-carbon transportation policies influence one another. First, we demonstrate that emissions trading between California and Quebec has been asymmetric, with linking having little influence on carbon prices from California\u27s perspective but leading to a considerable cost reduction from the point of view of Quebec. Second, we present evidence that Quebec has replicated many of California\u27s low-carbon transportation policies that promote increased electric vehicle use, where Quebec has an advantage, while deferring to the Canadian federal government with regard to policies that incentivize the production of other low-carbon transportation fuels. Third, we demonstrate that while the stringency of the policy mix of carbon pricing and flexible transportation regulations has increased over time in both jurisdictions, the stringency of flexible regulations has been more aggressively ratcheted up and is expected to continue to dominate. Overall, our findings suggest that the policy sequence observed in California and Quebec can be attributed to the political economy benefits that the selected instruments confer to governments seeking to move from the middle towards the bottom of the clean technology experience curve. We discuss a number of important research questions and associated hypotheses emanating from our findings, which provide the basis for more in-depth studies involving a larger universe of cases and economic sectors

Public-Private Partnerships in California: Phase II Report: Section II: Criteria for Evaluating P3 Projects

In this section of our report we develop criteria for evaluating the potential for a project to be delivered as a P3. We started by researching past attempts at P3 evaluation. We found no published research that offers a list of criteria for predicting the success of a proposed P3. Therefore, we reviewed studies of P3s and, developed a framework for evaluating P3s' potential for success. Using data from 100 P3 projects, we apply our framework to identify the attributes present in successful P3 projects. While we attempt to tease out the common attributes of successful P3s, the presence of said attributes in planned P3s will not necessarily induce nor predict success. We hope that our research will become part of a broader tool kit that public sponsors and private partners can use to evaluate potential projects' suitability as P3s

The California Sustainable Freight Action Plan Requires Consideration of Economic Competitiveness of the Freight Sector [Policy Brief]

This brief summarizes the research support that METRANS has been providing to this stakeholder group. The first phase of the work was to establish a framework for measuring economic competitiveness and establishing a 2030 target. METRANS has taken a deliberate approach in order to achieve consensus among the stakeholders and assure that the process would result in meaningful metrics

The Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Policies for Reducing GHG emissions in the Freight Sector [Brief]

We develop a novel simulation that integrates aspects of route-level and multi-market models to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of alternative public policies that stimulate a faster adoption of cleaner technologies to reduce GHG emissions in the freight sector. The route-level model adds important spatial features that influence fuel consumption and fleet composition, such as nodes of pickup and delivery; while the multi-market model allows for adjustments in final prices, which in turn affect the sizes of fleet sectors and output markets. Most of the effort was in conceptualizing this integration and highlight its benefits. Preliminary simulations are conducted to illustrate the emissions that result from Phase 1 EPA regulations and ZEVs

Application of a Regional Multi-Modal Transportation System Performance Monitoring Framework

DTRT13-G-UTC57Comprehensive archives of regional real-time transportation system data, drawn from public agency fixed and moving detectors and integrated across travel modes, can provide unprecedented opportunities for precise and reliable system performance analysis at relatively low costs. Our access to the state-of-the-art Archived Data Management System (ADMS), a large transportation data archive in Los Angeles, has made possible new research aimed at developing strategies to improve the efficiency and productivity of urban transportation systems. This project, an application of the ADMS, presents a flexible framework to examine the characteristics and explanatory factors associated with intra-metropolitan variation in highway system performance in Los Angeles County. Using one year of highway data and employing three different performance measures that capture network traffic congestion, flow and reliability, we analyze the effects of systematic, random and land use factors on performance variation. We find that performance differs across different types of highway segments, and that population density and accidents are significant factors in explaining these differences. Our study sheds new light on spatiotemporal variations in highway system performance within a large and congested metropolitan area. We underscore the need for investing in regional data archives, and applying them for research and analysis in order to improve planning and system management

Location of Warehouses and Environmental Justice: Evidence From Four Metros in California

16-1.1gWarehousing activities generate substantial externalities that affect surrounding neighborhoods. Using data for four major metropolitan areas in California, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento, this study tests the relationship between the spatial distribution of warehouses and disadvantaged neighborhoods. The results show that warehouses are disproportionately located in minority neighborhoods, regardless of the urban contexts. The four metros are diversified in the roles of global trade, land availability, and development stage of the warehousing industry

Freight Volume Modeling on Major Highway Links

69A3551747109With this research the authors would like to validate the feasibility of freight volume estimation on major highways links from accurate but sparse sensor data, by studying a restricted control area covering approximately 12 square miles around the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach where freight volume is most relevant. The authors researched creating a real-world dataset of real-world data in this region, however, due to the COVID 19 pandemic the authors had to limit the collection to publicly available Caltrans CCTV video footage and leveraged the authors' ADMS traffic database to generate synthetic data. The authors have implemented state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms, which were used to classify trucks and define truck categories optimized for best performance. These results show that it is feasible to use CCTV cameras to detect and classify trucks and that the process can be fully automated. In parallel, the authors created a truck simulator to generate realistic truck trajectories between predefined locations, and developed algorithms to estimate freight on links with different heuristics. The authors' approach provides the best results by relating compatible observations across sensors using travel-time information estimated on current traffic conditions. The authors' preliminary results show that freight volume estimation on major highways links is feasible