UCTC University of California Transportation Center

Primary campus:
University of California, Berkeley, Davis, Irvine and Los Angeles

Funding:
Federal - $1,000,000/ year
 State - $1,000,000/ year

Neighborhood Attributes and commuting Behavior: A Comparative Study of California's Major Metropolitan Areas.

Land use planners are very interested in the commuting effects or urban form and structure. New Urbanist designs, for example, are often promoted as a way to remedy traffic problems. Yet, in spite of many years of research, very little is really known. Small-area data from the 2000 census as well as new capabilities to compare small-area data for the last four rounds of the census suggest that there is now an opportunity to expand our understanding of the transportation-land use nexus. This research will focus on neighborhood types in California's metropolitan areas. We will seek to characterize neighborhoods in meaningful ways. The links between neighborhood types, neighborhood change, and commuting will be analyzed.

Better transportation and land use planning.

Transportation Policy Development: Labor as a Missing Stakeholder

This research project seeks to understand the role of labor in the development of transportation policy. The research takes a two-pronged approach: first, it examines the processes of coalition building in which labor has engaged as it seeks to participate in transportation policymaking. Second, the research analyzes the problems of consensus building around transportation policy within the labor movement, where institutional complexity, the potentially divergent interests of different unions, and a culture organized around the immediate goals of collective bargaining make it difficult for labor to engage effectively. The research will be conducted in two states: Illinois, where transit unions have launched a statewide coalition to increase state spending on public transit; and California, (both LA and the Bay Area), where central labor councils have taken the lead in bringing labor into transportation policymaking.

This research will increase the understanding of the role of local coalitions in influencing transportation decision-making and specific challenges facing labor as they seek to influence transportation policy, whether through labor-community coalitions or through their own efforts. As such, the research will provide new ways to analyze problems related to access and participation in the transportation planning process.

A Consumer Logistics Framework for Understanding Preferences for High-Speed Rail Transportation

CL theory will be used to develop “consumer logistics sensitivity profiles” for 1) various demographic groups, 2) differing proclivities toward various modes of transportation (HSR, conventional rail, air, and auto), and 3) differing usage intention levels for HSR. For intercity travel, a great deal of the convenience phenomenon resides in the activities involving the location, storage, communication, transportation, and transaction activities. CL applies aptly to these activities (Granzin and Bahn 1989) and will be used to examine U.S. (California) perceptions of HSR travel. Behavioral and perceptual data will be collected to test a CL model of HSR usage intentions along with usage of competing modes of transportation. Examination of the structural models will inform the deployment of inter-city HSR service in the U.S..

This study incorporates CL theory in the context of channels research that hypothesizes relationships between 1) performance of CL functions, 2) development of consumer value (efficiency and effectiveness), and 3) satisfaction/usage intention (with HSR transportation). The results will provide an understanding of the differences underlying the convenience of HSR, conventional rail, air, and auto transportation in the SF-LA corridor in terms of a CL sensitivity profile. The results will show the manner and the extent to which HSR is likely to lead to customer usage of inter-city transportation and how HSR line managers, by enhancing their CL capabilities, can enhance patronage of HSR transportation between SF-LA.

Decision Making Influences in Land Use and Transportation: An Experiment on the Impact of Transportation and Housing Information

The research design entails a random assignment of incoming graduate students to a control group and three experimental groups, each of which is exposed to web-based transit and/or housing information, with both the content and the timing varying among groups. The website will be configured to collect information on the frequency and duration with which participants access the web information. Further analysis of residential and travel patterns will employ this information as a measure of exposure to the treatment. The groups will be surveyed after their relocation to Ann Arbor (by web, and by US mail as needed for follow-up). Surveys will focus on individual travel behavior and residential location patterns. Travel behavior data will be analyzed statistically (bivariate and multivariate), with inferences made from any significant intergroup differences. Locational data (which will be available even for non-respondents via the University's address records) will be geocoded and characterized with appropriate spatial statistics.

This research project will fill largely unexplored niches in two areas of the literature about travel behavior: the interaction between travel behavior and land use patterns, and the effect that new information technologies (i.e., Intelligent Transportation Systems-ITS) can have on travel behavior. In the former realm, existing transportation and land use studies excel in tracking short and long run correlations between transportation behavior and urban form. Given the nature of their subject however, they are almost never based on true experimental research designs, as it is impossible to assign individuals randomly to residences in different kinds of metropolitan environments. In contrast, the proposed transportation and land use study is a true experimental design based on random assignment to control and experimental groups. The anticipated conclusions from this study will be more robust than those reached under the more common quasi-experimental designs, enabling the researchers to quantify the relationship between land-use and travel behavior with more precision and confidence.

Family Caregivers, the Elderly, and Land-Use: An Evaluation of Transportation in Two California Communities

Of the two study communities to be chosen for this research, one will have relatively high-density development and be composed of mixed land uses and the other will be characterized by lower density and with more segregated land uses. Our second goal is to identify whether, controlling for other variables, these land-use differences affect the travel behavior and experiences of seniors and caregivers in our two communities. The relationship between land-use characteristics and travel remains and important question in the literature and practice.

Our report will provide a multidimensional description of the transportation habits and needs of caregivers and seniors in this target population. Our findings will also contribute to literature on the relationship of land use to the caregiver-senior relationship. Local researchers, policy makers, and communities will better understand in quantitative and qualitative terms the needs and accomplishments of resident caregivers and seniors. Specific programs that may be chosen to support caregivers include: flexible work schedules offered by employers; short-term in-home supervision to allow caregiving spouses to do errands; and specialized transportation services. Financial support to caregivers for transportation needs—from loans for cars to reduced transit fares—also could be provided by government agencies.

Impact of Ethnic Diversity on Transit: How Do Various Population Groups View and Utilize Various Transit Modes? – Phase II

Phase I included the literature search, designing a sample, selecting the communities (y), constructing and pretesting the survey questionnaire, and selecting the survey organization. Those tasks have been completed. Phase II will include translations of the survey into Spanish, Cantonese, possibly Mandarin, and Vietnamese; on-board interviews to collect survey contacts; administration of the telephone survey; analysis of the data, and the final report. A more complete description is included in the 2109 prospectus.

Diverse communities present marketing and operational planning challenges to transit agencies. By focusing on three groups in more than one generation (African-Americans, Chinese, and Hispanics) this research will assist agencies in understanding potentially unique characteristics of these groups. A Caucasian control group will help determine whether these groups also differ the population group most often seen as the “customer.” The information may be helpful in service planning, marketing and customer relations.