METRANS Transportation Center - USC and CSULB

This November, among the many referenda that Californians will vote on, Angelenos get to vote yes or no on whether to grant a permanent, 1/2-cent sales tax to support transit and transportation projects throughout southern California. Debate about Measure M has become pretty hot. The Mayor of Beverly Hills has called Measure M the “Forever Tax.” But previously passed Prop A and C are permanent, and those found support among LA County voters. Measure M pushes the sales taxes in LA County upwards of 10 percent, and in a region with high housing and cost of living, and relatively low wage growth, that increase is sure to be felt. Nonetheless, the measure boasts some impressive endorsements, from the LA Times and myriad urban advocacy organizations like the LA Bike Coalition. How should you vote? Join us for our panel discussion of the Measure’s pros and cons moderated by Dr. Lisa Schweitzer, Associate Professor in the USC Price School. With us will be Laura Nelson of the LA Times, Stephanie Wiggins, Deputy Chief Executive Office of LA Metro, and Damien Goodman, Executive Director of Crenshaw Subway Coalition and Lead Organizer of No on Measure M, Dr. Jeffrey Sellers, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at USC, and Dr. Mark Phillips, Assistant Professor of economics and tax policy at USC.

This talk evaluates the California cut flower industry's current transportation practices and investigates the feasibility and cost of establishing a shipping consolidation center in Oxnard, California. The problem is formulated using a Mixed-Integer programming model. The model estimates a 34.8% shipping cost decrease, $20M, if all California farms participated in the consolidation center. Our analysis of estimated cut-flower trade flows originating from Miami shows that the magnitudes of these flows are relatively sensitive to shipping cost, controlling for market size. Maged Dessouky Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering USC Viterbi School of Engineering Wentao Zhang Ph. D. Candidate, Industrial Systems and Engineering USC Viterbi School of Engineering Maged M. Dessouky is a Professor in the Daniel. J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California and the Director of the Epstein Institute. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He is area/associate editor the Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, IIE Transactions and Computers and Industrial Engineering, on the editorial board of Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, and previously served as area editor/associate of ACM Transactions of Modeling and Computer Simulation and IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. He is a Fellow of IIE and was awarded the 2007 Transportation Science and Logistics Best Paper Prize.

"I Want It Now: E-Commerce, Supply Chains and Transportation" - Featuring Benjamin D. Conwell, Senior Managing Director, Cushman & Wakefield The explosion of eCommerce is driving drastically changed customer expectations globally which, in turn, is causing some of the most significant disruption in retail, transportation and international trade we’ve seen in the last fifty years. Amazon’s dominance and pace of innovation increasingly demand players aspiring to succeed in the new world order constantly reinvent the way they operate. Players in this space have little choice. And little time.

Cities are the engines of economic growth because they provide opportunities for enhanced productivity. They provide opportunities for productive spatial arrangements, often involving “clustering” and “agglomerating.” But these widely cited descriptors are seldom defined. This research uses business location data for Los Angeles County to test various associated questions. (1) To what extent do technological links explain spatial clustering? (2) How does this vary by industry? (3) Are the smallest firms attracted to the densest areas because they are most dependent on information developed by others? (4) How does this vary by industry? This research investigates these questions at the sub-metropolitan (traffic analysis zone) level. Speakers: Peter Gordon Emeritus Professor, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy John Cho Associate Regional Planner, Southern California Association of Governments Peter Gordon, Ph.D.,is an Emeritus Professor of the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He retired in 2013 after 43 years at USC. He now teaches each summer at Zhejian University in Hangzhou, China. Gordon’s interests are in urban economics and urban transportation economics. He is a Fellow of the Regional Science Association International, a past president of the Western Regional Science Association and received the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. John Cho, Ph.D., is Associate Regional Planner at SCAG. His research interests include topics in freight transportation, land use and transportation policy, and regional economics. He received a Ph.D. in industrial and Systems Engineering, and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering specialized in Transportation Engineering from USC, and an M.A. in Economics from Seoul National University.

New “carpooling” services, such as LyftLine and UberPool, offers consumers lower prices than conventional ridesourcing service in exchange for extra stops to pick up and drop off other passengers. This presentation explores the competitive implications of this new mobility option for public transit. Professor Schwieterman shares results from his controlled experiment in which data collectors made 50 one-way trips between various urban locations to measure the differing costs, time, and conveniences associated with UberPool and Chicago Transit Authority service, an approach that controls for a wide variety of others factors, such as time of day, weather, and traffic conditions. The results show that saving from carpooling for commuter traveling downtown jobs in small, but the $5 - $6 additional cost to carpool is an attractive “value proposition” for many travelers who have historically used transit on neighborhood-neighborhood trips. Speaker: Joseph Schwieterman Director, Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development Professor, DePaul University Joseph Schwieterman is professor at DePaul University in Chicago and Director of the school’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. A noted authority on passenger travel, he has twice testified on transportation issues before subcommittees of the U.S. Congress. Schwieterman is the primary author of an annual year-in- review of the intercity bus industry and currently researching how local policies affect “shared use” modes such as carsharing and ridersharing. Schwieterman holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago.

Peter Gordon, Ph.D., an Emeritus Professor of the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California gives his presentation on “Cities and Economics Growth” to students, faculty, and practitioners. This presentation is a part of the Spring 2016 METRANS Research Seminar program, an ongoing series of presentations designed to share cutting-edge transportation research with interested parties throughout the industry.

Co-sponsored by USC METRANS and the Los Angeles chapter of WTS (Women’s Transportation Seminar), an international organization dedicated to building the future of transportation through the global advancement of women.

Over the past 20 years, local and regional governments in the Los Angeles metropolitan area have invested significant resources in building rail transit infrastructure that connects major employment centers. One goal of transit infrastructure is to catalyze the development of high density, mixed-use housing and commercial activity within walking distance of rail stations, referred to as Transit Oriented Development (TOD). This project examines the quantity, type, and mix of economic activity that has occurred around newly built rail stations in Los Angeles over the past 20 years. Specifically, have the number of jobs or housing market characteristics changed near stations? We use establishment-level data on employment and property-level data on housing transactions to analyze changes in several employment and housing outcomes. Results suggest that new rail stations were located in areas that, prior to station opening, had unusually high employment density and mostly multifamily rental housing. There is no evidence of changes in employment density, housing sales volume, or new housing development within five years after station opening. Regressions suggest that a subset of stations saw increased employment density within five to ten years after opening. Speakers: Genevieve Giuliano Director, METRANS Transportation Center Professor, Margaret & John Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government Eun Jin Shin Ph.D. candidate, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy Genevieve Giuliano, Ph.D., is Professor and Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, and Director of the METRANS joint USC and California State University Long Beach Transportation Center. She conducts research on relationships between land use and transportation, transportation policy analysis, and information technology applications in transportation. Her current research includes examination of relationships between land use and freight flows, and development of applications for transportation system analysis using archived real-time data, and analysis of commercial and residential development around transit stations. Eun Jin Shin is a Ph.D. candidate at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, with an academic focus on urban spatial structure and transportation. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil, Urban, and Geosystem Engineering from Seoul National University, and her Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research focuses on the travel behavior of transportation-disadvantaged populations.

A Joint Production of the USC Urban Growth Seminar Series and the METRANS Transportation Center. Despite a growing body of work defining the benefits and methods to encourage multi-modal travel, only a small body of research has worked to fuse urban design and complete street philosophies. Based on work recently published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research on street design and two-way street conversions, Dr. William Riggs will discuss how street typologies and complete streets dialogues are linked, and how urban design policies might be advanced to facilitate safer and more livable streets. Speaker: William Riggs Professor, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo Consultant, Sustinere Consulting Discussant: Woodie Tescher Principal, Planning and Urban Design, PlaceWorks William (Billy) Riggs is a professor at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a consultant at Sustinere Consulting. He focuses on parking & transportation, active travel, housing, economics, and technology. He has over 50 publications in these areas, and has had his work featured in multiple national media outlets—including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the Atlantic. Prior to his academic career he worked as a professional practitioner for over 15 years. This included serving as: the Principal Planner and Parking and Transportation Program Manager for UC Berkeley; a project planner for the consulting firm Arup in which he worked on the master planning of 5,000+ acres on former military land in Concord, CA and completed the certification of two of the pilot LEED Neighborhood Design projects; a planner for the US Coast Guard conducting award winning physical design and mobility planning for Coast Guard bases domestically and abroad. He holds his PhD from UC Berkeley’ s College of Environmental Design, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a University of California, Transportation Center Fellow. He is also a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), is LEED certified by the US Green Building Council (LEED AP). He currently sits on the City of San Luis Obispo, Planning Commission.

Traffic congestion impedes our mobility, pollutes the air, wastes fuel, and hampers economic growth. While physical bottlenecks, overpopulation, weather, and construction can all lead to congestion, a key contributor to traffic congestion is road accidents - events that disrupt the normal flow of traffic. Reducing the impact of traffic accidents has been one of the primary objectives for transportation policy makers. In this talk, we present a novel machine learning framework to forecast how travel-time delays - caused by accidents - occur and progress in the transportation network. This research is conducted by correlating 4 years of historical traffic sensor and accident data archived under ADMS project developed - by METRANS and IMSC centers of USC - for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speakers: Ugur Demiyurek Associate Director, Integrated Media Systems Center USC Viterbi Dingxiong Deng Ph. D student, Computer Science Department University of Southern California Ugur Demiryurek is Associate Director of Research at IMSC, and has M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from USC. His research is focused on fundamental and applied data management with special interest in Geospatial Databases, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning. He has been supported by grants from both government agencies (NSF, Caltrans, Metro) and industry partners (Microsoft Research, Oracle Labs, Intel, HP Labs). Demiryurek authored two book chapters and more than forty research articles since 2010 and holds three US patents. Prior to IMSC, Demiryurek worked for fortune 500 companies in database technology development and data scientist positions. He regularly serves on the program committee of various major database conferences including ACM SIGMOD, ACM SIGSPATIAL, IEEE ICDM, DASFAA, SSTD, and MDM, and is a member of IEEE and ACM.

It is long been argued that fuel economy standards lead to vehicle weight changes that can potentially increase accident fatalities. Using unconditional quantile regressions, this paper is the first to document the effect of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard on vehicle weight dispersion. We find that CAFE increased dispersion, which increases fatalities, but also lowered mean weight, which will reduce fatalities. When combined, removing these weight changes from 17 million accidents, we find that on net CAFE actually saved more than 100 lives per year. Further, total lives saved increases if vehicle footprint is maintained, suggesting that outcomes could improve even further if the new footprint based standard effectively preserves vehicle size while allowing for weight changes according to precedent. Speaker: Antonio M. Bento Director, Graduate Programs in Public Policy Professor, USC Price Antonio Bento is an applied micro-economist with a research program in the areas of environmental, energy, urban, and public economics. Most of his work consists of theoretical and empirical assessments of major public policy issues, and his scholarly interests range widely both in topics and methods. Professor Bento contributed to the New York State Climate Change Action Plan, the New York State Biofuels Roadmap, the U.N. Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) Assessment Report on Biofuels, served as a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, and was recently appointed as a lead author to the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP). Bento received a BA in Economics from the Nova School of Business and Economics (Portugal) in 1996, and a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics (jointly with Economics) from the University of Maryland in 2000.

Traditionally, pavement inductive loop sensors are used to collect real time traffic data for passenger-freight movement in roadways. This method, however, is expensive to install and maintain. In the last decade, significant improvements have been achieved in MEMS sensors domain with respect to size, cost and accuracy. Motivated by these novel advances, we proposed a wireless MEMS sensor based passenger-freight interactions detection framework for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Our proposed solution will be significantly cost effective in comparison to traditional induction loop approach and it is scalable to cover millions miles of roadways all over the US. Speaker: Mohammad Mozumdar Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering California State University, Long Beach Mohammad Mozumdar has been working as a full time faculty in the Electrical Engineering Dept. of California State University at Long Beach (CSULB) since August 2012. Before joining CSULB, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences department of the University of California, Berkeley for two and a half years. He received his Ph.D. in electronics and communication engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy; his M.Sc in software system engineering from Aachen Technical University in Germany; and his B.Sc in computer science and engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology. Dr. Mozumdar’s research interests include methodologies and tools for embedded systems, especially in the domain of sensor networks; energy efficient building information and control system design; cyber physical systems; methodology for the design of distributed embedded systems typically subjected to high real time, safety and reliability constraints.

Most people view parking meters as a necessary evil, or perhaps just evil. Meters can manage curb parking efficiently and provide public revenue, but they are a tough sell to voters. To change the politics of parking, cities can give price discounts at parking meters for their own residents, spend the meter revenue to improve local public services, and use the meters to provide free Wi-Fi to everyone on metered streets. People who live, work, shop, and own property in the metered neighborhoods will see that parking meters are working for them rather than against them. By changing the politics of parking, cities can meter more of their valuable curb space, producing more money, less traffic, cleaner air, and a cooler planet. Parking meters can then do a world of good. Speaker: Donald Shoup Director, Institute of Transportation Studies Research Professor in Urban Planning, UCLA Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. His recent research has focused on how parking policies affect cities, the economy, and the environment. His research on employer-paid parking led to the passage of California’s parking cash-out law, and to changes in the Internal Revenue Code to encourage parking cash out. In his book, The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup argues that cities should charge fair market prices for on-street parking, use the meter revenue to finance added public services in the metered neighborhoods, and remove off-street parking requirements. Shoup is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners; an Honorary Professor at Beijing Transportation Research Center, Editor of ACCESS, and in 2015 received the APA’s highest honor, the National Excellence Award for a Planning Pioneer.

To meet California’s goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reductions in driving will be necessary. But how will the state’s Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) meet their targets for reductions in vehicle-miles traveled (VMT)? This presentation looks at three of the many questions raised by this challenge: Will the recent downturn in VMT take care of the problem? If not, which of the possible strategies are likely to help the most? In particular, will the current bicycling craze make a difference? One thing that is certain is the need for a multi-faceted approach to reducing VMT. Speaker: Susan Handy Professor, Dept. of Environmental Science and Policy, UC Davis Director, Sustainable Transportation Center, UC Davis Dr. Susan Handy is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the Director of the Sustainable Transportation Center at the University of California Davis. Her research interests focus on the relationships between transportation and land use, particularly the impact of land development patterns on travel behavior. She is internationally known for her research on the connection between neighborhood design and walking behavior. Her current work focuses on improving understanding of the choice to bicycle as a mode of transportation. She is a member of the Committee on Women’s Issues in Transportation of the Transportation Research Board and has served on committees of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. Hosted by the METRANS Transportation Center and jointly sponsored by the National Center for Sustainable Transportation

Hosted by the METRANS Transportation Center Join us for an industry perspective on the future transportation professional. The transportation industry is changing rapidly, amid the emergence of new technologies, services and information systems, public policy goals aimed at improving the environment, and changing consumer behaviors. How should tomorrow’s industry professionals – public and private – be trained? What skills are most important? Are our universities providing the right knowledge or degree programs? Our industry panelists will tell us what they need and expect in new hires. Our academic leaders will discuss how universities are responding to these needs and expectations. The panel discussion will be followed by audience questions. Industry Panelists: Michael Christensen Senior Executive for Supply Chain Optimization, Port of Long Beach CJ Nord Institute for Supply Management Arthur Leahy CEO, Metrolink Jake Racker Senior Director, Network Strategy and Engineering, Kroger, Inc. Educators: Elizabeth Graddy Vice Dean, University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy Ingrid Martin Professor, California State University, Long Beach, College of Business Administration James Moore Vice Dean, University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering Moderator: Thomas O’Brien Interim Executive Director, Center for International Trade and Transportation, California State University, Long Beach and Associate Director, METRANS

Over the course of the past century there have been numerous attempts to merge the seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. All failed. Most recently the Los Angeles city council 2020 Commission report recommended merging the ports. What does it take for seaports to merge successfully and where has this happened? This presentation will examine the motivations behind and the conditions precedent to successful seaport mergers. Geraldine Knatz is Professor of the Practice of Policy and Engineering, a joint appointment between the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy and the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She served as the Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles from 2006 to January 2014. She was the first woman to serve in this role and made a significant impact through the creation and implementation of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan, an aggressive plan that reduced air emissions by combined port operations of over 70 percent over five years which is recognized around the world for its innovation and success. She was also the Managing Director of the Port of Long Beach where she also led a number of environmental initiatives, including the Green Port Policy and Truck Trip Reduction Program. She is past president of the American Association of Port Authorities and past president of the International Association of Ports and Harbors. She serves as Gov. Brown’s appointee on the Ocean Protection Council.

A Joint Production of the METRANS Transportation Center and the USC Urban Growth Seminar Series. Speaker: Seleta Reynolds General Manager, Los Angeles Department of Transportation Discussant: Jeremy Klop Principal, Fehr and Peers, Los Angeles  Seleta Reynolds is General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) appointed by the Administration of Mayor Eric Garcetti. She leads the department as well as day-to-day operations of a multi-faceted organization with an annual budget of $526 million. LADOT’s 2,000 employees are responsible for managing over 6,500 miles of streets, 35,000 parking meters, and the most advanced traffic signal system in the country, with 4,500 traffic lights. The Department serves over 26 million trips each year on DASH buses, the second largest bus service in Los Angeles County; enforces parking laws; and facilitates over 2,000 special events each year. Ms. Reynolds is responsible for implementing Great Streets for Los Angeles, a plan to reduce traffic fatalities, double the number of people riding bikes, and expand access to integrated transportation choices for Angelenos and the region. Ms. Reynolds has over 16 years of experience planning, funding, and implementing transportation projects throughout the United States. Prior to accepting her current position, Ms. Reynolds served as a manager in in the Livable Streets sub- division at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, where she led the section responsible for safety, innovation, policy, and coordination for complete streets projects citywide. She oversaw the creation of an implementation plan for Vision Zero, the City’s goal to reach zero traffic deaths. She is a past president of the Association for Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals and serves on the Transportation Research Board Bicycle and Pedestrian Committees and the WalkScore Advisory Board. Ms. Reynolds was on the Steering Committee for NACTO’s Urban Streets Design Guide and the National Safe Routes to School Toolbox.

Part of the USC METRANS Transportation Research Seminar Series. METRANS' mission is to solve transportation problems of large metropolitan regions through interdisciplinary research, education and outreach. Speaker: Peter Gordon Emeritus Professor, USC Price Peter Gordon, Ph.D., holds a joint appointment with the Department of Economics. His research interests include topics in applied urban and regional economics. Professor Gordon has participated in the development and application of the Southern California Planning Model (SCPM), which has been used to forecast the economic costs of various policies and natural events. Professor Gordon’s recent work concerns the interaction of urban settlement patterns and travel demand. He has consulted for a number of international agencies, government departments, and private groups. Most people now carry the equivalent of a supercomputer in their pocket. The impacts on people's everyday activities are easily seen. What about the impacts of cheap and easy electronic communications on location choice and cities? We focus on recent data for U.S. workers who do most of their work at home. Does occupation explain their choice? Does urban form matter? Do local planning policies? Our main interest is the nature of information exchange. We expect that codified information and tacit information are treated very differently. Lots of information exchange involves tacit information. Agglomeration (and cities and distance) are not ending or dying. The biggest question in economics is still the one Adam Smith asked over 200 years ago: Why are some countries rich and why are some poor? What accounts for their economic growth differences? “Once you start thinking about them [international differences in living standards], it's hard to think about anything else" Robert Lucas (2002). Growth is the most powerful anti-poverty device. Cities must be part of the story. We owe our prosperity to Smithian exchange and Schumpeterian entrepreneurialism. Both involve the formation of complex supply chains. Both are facilitated by the evolution of Coasian transactions costs. This involves the evolution of cities and networking opportunities. Spatial organization is part of industrial organization. Labor and capital move to cities for reasons of transaction cost economies. There are concurrently economies from externalities internalized. Cities compete. Successful cities manage to make significant economies available to very large numbers of people and firms. Jane Jacobs noted that continuous and profitable interactive opportunities must be available; this is how people in cities interact and learn from each other. “Their intricate order – a manifestation of the freedom of countless numbers of people to make and carry out countless plans – is in many ways a wonder” Jane Jacobs (1961).

METRANS' mission is to solve transportation problems of large metropolitan regions through interdisciplinary research, education and outreach. Speaker: Peter Gordon Emeritus Professor, USC Price Peter Gordon, Ph.D., holds a joint appointment with the Department of Economics. His research interests include topics in applied urban and regional economics. Professor Gordon has participated in the development and application of the Southern California Planning Model (SCPM), which has been used to forecast the economic costs of various policies and natural events. Professor Gordon’s recent work concerns the interaction of urban settlement patterns and travel demand. He has consulted for a number of international agencies, government departments, and private groups. Most people now carry the equivalent of a supercomputer in their pocket. The impacts on people's everyday activities are easily seen. What about the impacts of cheap and easy electronic communications on location choice and cities? We focus on recent data for U.S. workers who do most of their work at home. Does occupation explain their choice? Does urban form matter? Do local planning policies? Our main interest is the nature of information exchange. We expect that codified information and tacit information are treated very differently. Lots of information exchange involves tacit information. Agglomeration (and cities and distance) are not ending or dying.

Part of the METRANS Transportation Research Seminar Series. METRANS' mission is to solve transportation problems of large metropolitan regions through interdisciplinary research, education and outreach. Lisa Schweitzer is Associate Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. She specializes in urban studies, and, in particular, analyses of social justice, environment and transport. Her work has appeared in multiple popular and scholarly outlets, and her research = has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. She maintains a blog about sustainable urbanism at www.lisaschweitzer.com. Abstract: How media portray public transit services can affect the way voters and stakeholders think about future transit investments. An examination of social media content, specifically Twitter feeds, about public transit finds that they reflect more negative sentiments about public transit than do the comments about most other public services, and include more negative material about transit patrons. However, transit agencies may be able to influence the tone of those comments through the way they engage with social media. Transit agencies that respond directly to questions, concerns, and comments of other social media users, as opposed to merely “blasting” announcements, have more positive statements about all aspects of services, independent of actual service quality. The interaction does not have to be customer oriented. Agencies using Twitter to chat with users about their experiences or new service also have statistically significantly more positive sentiments expressed about them on social media.

Presented by METRANS Transportation Center as part of the METRANS Transportation Research Seminar Series. Dr. Rui Wang, an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, specializes in the interdisciplinary policy analysis of environmental, transportation, and urban development issues, especially in China and the US. He teaches in the Departments of Urban Planning and Public Policy, directs the UCLA Chinese Planning Professional Training Program, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Transportation and Statistics. Professor Rui Wang has consulted with the Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the World Bank. He also gave invited talks at the China Finance 40 Forum, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, RAND, the World Bank, and numerous academic conferences and institutions. Abstract: Driving restrictions have been implemented in several cities across the world. However, limited by data gaps and the weaknesses of the prevailing research method, few studies have quantified driving restrictions' effects on traffic and researchers disagree about the air quality effects of driving restrictions. We take advantage of the Chinese cultural resentment toward the number four and use the unequal stringency of alternative restricted plate numbers as repeated exogenous treatments to identify the marginal effects of driving restrictions. For the first time in similar studies, we introduce data measuring traffic condition to help explain the mechanism of driving restrictions' traffic and air quality effects. We find that more stringent driving restrictions had a positive impact on citywide traffic speed, but little effect on the concentration of inhalable particulates. Given Beijing's extremely congested roads, we consider it most plausible that due to the non-monotonic network- level traffic speed—volume relationship, a marginal reduction in the number of usable vehicles may result in fewer delays, but little or even negative impact on air quality. This implies that positive traffic and environmental effects of a policy may not go hand in hand.

METRANS Industry Outlook Event: “Port Congestion: Supply Chains, Stakeholders, and Shipping Industry Trends” A Lecture by Patrick Burgoyne, President and CEO of NYK Ports LLC, the holding company of Yusen Terminals (YTI) and Ceres Terminals (CERES). Abstract: Congestion is occurring at ports around the US, with some of the worst problems in Southern California. Some causes seem clear – the continuing economic recovery that has generated more trade demand, a late holiday traffic surge, and the challenges of processing ever larger ships – but is there more to the story? What about recent shifts in chassis ownership, labor shortages, or rail capacity? Do longer term changes in trade patterns or the shipping industry play a role? Will this year’s congestion affect competitiveness among North American ports? This presentation examines all the factors associated with congestion at the ports, discusses possible strategies for addressing them, and concludes with a forecast of what we can expect in the future, both locally and across the continent.

METRANS Transportation Research Seminar Series Seiji Steimetz Incentives to Reduce Air Pollution by Reducing Ship Speeds: Evidence from the Port of Long Beach Green Flag Program  Seiji Steimetz is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Economics at the California State University, Long Beach, and a member of the METRANS Transportation Center Executive Committee. His research interests include transportation, urban, and environmental economics, with an emphasis on applied econometrics and methodology. Dr. Steimetz has published his research in leading economics and interdisciplinary journals. We Using discrete-choice econometric methods, we estimate the relationship between dockage-fee discounts and speed-reduction compliance rates while controlling for vessel and operator characteristics. Our findings suggest that such discounts are effective incentives to reduce ship speeds and thus ship emissions. We also find that discount effects depend on vessel characteristics, suggesting a role for differentiated pricing policies.

Travel Behavior of Millennials METRANS Research Seminar Series Speaker:
 Evelyn Blumenberg
 Professor and Chair, Department of Urban Planning, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) The media is brimming with stories about how Millennials — today’s youth and young adults — differ in ways large and small from the youth and young adults who came before them. One of the most frequently mentioned differences is their travel behavior. Data show that young adults are less likely to have drivers’ licenses, travel less, and are more likely to use transit, walk, and bike than previous generations. While analysts generally agree about these trends, the reasons behind them remain the subject of speculation and debate. In this study, we use data from the National Household Travel survey and a set of statistical models to assess the influence of a variety of factors — demographic, economic, social, geographic, policy, and generational — on the travel behavior for both youth and middle-aged adults in the U.S. Evelyn Blumenberg is Professor and Chair of Urban Planning in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research examines the effects of urban structure—the spatial location of residents, employment, and services—on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities. Her recent projects include analyses of the travel behavior of special population groups including low-income adults, immigrants, and youth; the effects of the economy and increasing gas prices on the travel behavior and transportation assets in low-income communities; and the relationship between residential location, automobile ownership, and employment outcomes among the poor. Professor Blumenberg holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.

METRANS Research Seminar Series, jointly sponsored by USC Price Urban Growth Seminar Series. Speaker: Marlon Boarnet Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Urban Planning, Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California Discussant: Lisa Schweitzer Associate Professor, Urban Studies, USC Using the recently opened Exposition (Expo) light rail line in Los Angeles as a case study, Boarnet and co-investigator Doug Houston collected 7-day travel data from 204 households. Households were divided into two groups – an experimental group, within ½ mile of the Expo Line stations, and a control group, from ½ mile to more than 2 miles from the new stations. Each household completed 7-day travel tracking in fall of 2011, before the Expo Line’s April 2012 opening, and then again in fall, 2012, after the line was open. The data allow a comparison of before-after changes across experimental and control groups. The results show that households within ½ mile from the new stations reduced daily vehicle miles traveled by approximately 10 miles compared to control households. Results also show some increases in rail transit usage, and analyses that compare travel among households within and beyond 5/8 of a mile street network distance from stations show that the increase in rail trips among households near stations is statistically significant. Among study subjects who were the least physically active (approximately the bot-tom 40th percentile of daily physical activity in the sample), residence near stations is associated with after-opening increases in physical activity. About the Speaker: Marlon Boarnet is Professor and Senior Associate Dean, Academic Programs at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC. Boarnet’s research focuses on land use and transportation; links between land use and travel behavior and associated implications for public health and greenhouse gas emissions; urban growth patterns; and the economic impacts of transportation Infrastructure. He is co-author of Travel by Design (Oxford University Press, 2001), a comprehensive study of the link between land use and travel. Boarnet is a fellow of the Weimer School of the Homer Hoyt Institute for Real Estate and currently serves on the governing board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. Since 2002, Boarnet has co-edited the Journal of Regional Science, a leading international journal at the intersection of economics and quantitative geography. Boarnet also serves as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association and is on the editorial boards of several other academic journals. Boarnet was a member of the National Academy of Sciences / National Research Council Committee on “Relationships Among Development Patterns, Vehicle Miles Traveled, and Energy Consumption” which authored the report “Driving and the Built Environment.” He has been principal investigator on over 1.8 million dollars of funded research, supported by agencies that include the U.S. and California Departments of Transportation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Policy Research Center, the California Air Resources Board, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The METRANS Transportation Center hosts a presentation by Dan Gardner, President of Trade Facilitators, Inc. U.S. policy has supported open markets and the liberalization of trade over several decades. What are the outcomes, both intentional and otherwise, of trade liberalization? This presentation traces the process of globalization, as well as its impact on U.S. manufacturing and service industries. A careful examination of the past six decades reveals that globalization has had both positive and negative impacts on the U.S. economy, creating jobs in some areas while losing them in others. Upon reviewing the factors that converged to create America's current level of competitiveness, this presentation concludes with a series of suggestions on how the U.S. can compete more effectively in the Age of Globalization.

Heather Stephens is the Director of the California State University, Long Beach Office of Economic Research and an Assistant Professor of Economics. She has a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Her research is focused on examining the factors related to regional economic development and differences in the effect of public policies across regions. She also has prior experience working for a U.S. Congressman, on strategic partnership development for a Fortune 100 company, as a local economic development director, and on regional economic development and energy-related issues at a university-based applied research institute. Businesses choose locations to maximize profits and minimize costs. The amount of local pollution and other environmental disamenities are attributes of a particular location. Previous work has shown that states with lower environmental regulations (and, thus, potentially more pollution) have more manufacturing businesses. However, this says nothing about where businesses in other industries would locate or about whether, within a particular labor market, the immediate presence of such environmental degradation will be attractive or unattractive to businesses. While a growing literature has used micro-level data to examine the effect of environmental disamenities on household location and quality of life (QOL), very little work has been done to examine the relationship between business location and these factors. We use a detailed micro-level dataset to examine the relationship between business location and environmental degradation and to consider how this relationship may vary based on industry type. We also consider the effects of factors such as agglomeration that may entice businesses to co-locate. Since there is evidence that factors that are QOL-enhancing may not be productivity enhancing, understanding business location decisions can help us develop enhanced economic development strategies that weigh environmental and economic goals.

Presented by the USC Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and METRANS. Robert Sampson demonstrates the powerfully enduring impact of place on a wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen birth altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Join us to discuss the implications of this research for revitalizing neighborhoods portrayed in his book, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Robert J. Sampson is a Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative. Sampson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society of Criminology, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He served as President of the American Society of Criminology in 2011-2012 and in June 2011 he and his colleague John Laub received eh Stockholm Prize in Criminology. Professor Sampson's research and teaching cover a variety of areas including crime, disorder, the life course, neighborhood effects, civic engagement, inequality, "econometrics," and the social structure of the city.

Presented by METRANS Transportation Center as part of the Transportation Research Seminar Series. Over the past 20 years, California has made substantial investments in intra-metropolitan passenger rail infrastructure, expanding existing systems and building new ones. According to advocates of New Urbanism, such investment should encourage the growth of mixed-use transit-oriented development, defined as a high-density mix of residential and commercial uses within walking distance of rail stations. Little research to date has examined whether rail investment stimulates retail activity, which is a key component of mixed-use development. In this seminar, we examine whether the opening of new rail stations across California’s four largest metropolitan areas has affected retail employment within one-quarter mile of the stations, compared to similar neighborhoods around older stations or with no rail stations. Jenny Schuetz is an Assistant Professor in the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Her primary research interests are urban and real estate economics, local public finance, and housing policy. Her research has been published in a variety of journals, including Regional Science and Urban Economics, the Journal of Housing Economics, Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Urban Studies. Current research projects include urban retail location patterns and the relationship between art galleries and neighborhood change. Dr. Schuetz teaches classes in real estate finance and policy analysis. Dr. Schuetz earned a B.A. with Highest Distinction in Economics and Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, a Master's in City Planning from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Previously Dr. Schuetz worked for Abt Associates Inc., the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Ketan Savla is an assistant professor in the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. Before joining USC, he was a research scientist in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His current research interests are in distributed control and estimation of dynamical networks, state-dependent queuing systems and distributed control of mobile agents. The growth in travel demand is set to exceed rate of capacity expansion of our transportation infrastructure. Therefore, a majority of our transportation system is expected to operate at or near its capacity in the near future, and hence more vulnerable to disruptions. This, in combination with higher penetration of smart technology, is expected to induce severe dynamics from users and transportation controllers at multiple scales. It is therefore imperative to develop methodologies to model and control dynamical effects for real-time as well as long-term planning purposes. In this talk, we present our results on stability and robustness properties of dynamical urban transportation networks. The dynamical models consist of mass conservation on the links and flow conservation on the nodes. The routing of flow at the nodes is a result of a combination of driver route choice behavior and real-time control such as adaptive traffic signal control. We present a novel class of routing principles that use only local information for their implementation, and yet can be shown to be maximally stabilizing in presence of minor temporary disturbances and maximally robust towards severe and persistent disruptions. We particularly highlight the role of cascading effects in our analysis. Finally, we propose simple metrics for robustness of transportation networks in terms of network structure, travel demand, route choice and capacity, which are relevant for planning purposes.

Jean-Paul Rodrigue received a Ph.D. in Transport Geography from the Université de Montréal (1994) and has been a professor at Hofstra University since 1999. Dr. Rodrigue's research interests mainly cover the fields of transportation and economics as they relate to logistics and global freight distribution. Specific topics over which he has published extensively cover maritime transport systems and logistics, global supply chains and production networks, gateways and transport corridors. He has authored five books, 25 book chapters, more than 40 peer reviewed papers, numerous reports, and delivered more than 135 conferences and seminar presentations, mostly at the international level. Dr. Rodrigue developed a widely used online reference source about transportation which became a textbook, The Geography of Transport Systems, with its third edition published in June 2013. He is also on the international editorial board of the Journal of Transport Geography and the Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport, acts as the Van Horne Researcher in Transportation and Logistics (University of Calgary). He is a member of the PortEconomics.eu initiative regrouping the world’s leading maritime transport academics and performs advisory and consulting assignments for international organizations and corporations. Dr. Rodrigue is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Advanced Manufacturing (2011-2013). In 2013, the US Secretary of Transportation appointed Dr. Rodrigue to sit on the Advisory Board of the US Merchant Marine Academy. The container, like any technical innovation, has a functional (within transport chains) and geographical diffusion potential where a phase of maturity is eventually reached. Evidence from the global container port system suggests five main successive waves of containerization with a shift of the momentum from advanced economies to developing economies, but also within specific regions. These waves are illustrative of major macroeconomic, technological and sometimes political shifts within the global economy. Containerization has therefore a cyclic behavior and that inflection points are eventually reached, marking the end of the diffusion of containerization in a specific port or port range. Future expectations about the growth of containerization thus need to be assessed within an economic cycle perspective instead of the rather linear perspectives.

Is there a post car-ownership future? This Price Research Center Collaboratives brings together the Bedrosian Center on Governance and the METRANS Transportation Center to discuss the future of transportation. We will address the prevalence and growth of private sector alternatives like Megabus, Uber, and Lyft among other things. Panelists: Genevieve Giuliano, Director of METRANS Raphael Bostic, Director of Bedrosian Center on Governance Maged Dessouky, USC Professor of Engineering Mike Waters, Senior Director of Business Development West for Megabus/Coach USA Jeff Shields, General Manager for the LA Zipcar

ADMS (Archived Data Management System) archives real-time feeds from several different systems (freeways, arterials, and transit) from regional agencies, and provides data on traffic flows, incidents, and transit service. ADMS is a rich resource, not only for systems operations, management and planning, but also for analyzing impacts of system changes, from new infrastructure investments to fuel price variations. Access to this comprehensive historical archive of real-time multimodal system performance data has provided a unique opportunity to demonstrate how “big data” can be used for transportation planning and policy analysis. With funding by Metro, we use ADMS to evaluate the impacts of a major light rail investment in Los Angeles (the Expo Line) on corridor-level multimodal transportation system performance, comparing corridor-level system performance before and after opening of the rail line. Our findings reveal a significant positive impact on transit patronage, largely due to the existence of latent demand for high quality transit travel. Dr. Genevieve Giuliano is the Ferraro Chair in Effective Local Government and Senior Associate Dean of Research and Technology in the Sol Price School of Public Policy, at the University of Southern California, and the Director of the METRANS Transportation Center. Dr. Giuliano's current research includes analysis of growth and development of employment centers, examination of how ports and supply chains respond to environmental regulation, and development of planning and management applications using real-time transportation system data. She is the recipient of the TRB Distinguished Service Award (2006), the Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lectureship Award (2007), and the Transportation Research Forum Outstanding Researcher award (2012). She was recently appointed to the National Freight Advisory Committee. Sandip Chakrabarti is a Ph.D. candidate in urban planning at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and research assistant at the METRANS Transportation Research Center. His research focuses on the relationships between land use and transportation, the influence of value of time and reliability on travel behavior, and transportation policy analysis. Sandip completed his Master of City Planning degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, and worked as an urban planning consultant in New Delhi, India, before joining the Price School. Sandip has an undergraduate degree in Architecture, and is keenly interested in urban design and development

This special, invitation only event with Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa is part of the Leading from the West series, and sponsored by the Bedrsoian Center on Governance, METRANS, and the Sol Price School of Public Policy. Bedrosian Center Director Raphael Bostic and METRANS center Director Gen Giuliano will talk with Mayor Villaraigosa about the unique challenges and opportunities for transportation in the city.

A transportation seminar presented by the USC METRANS Center for Transportation. Abstract: We present findings from recent reports detailing the amount and type of walking and biking in California. We consolidate these findings to dispel myths and identify critical factors for adults and children who walk and bike. Some notable findings: On average, people in California walked more than in the nation as a whole. But over 1/3, disproportionately less educated, lower income, and of Asian or Hispanic heritage, report not taking any walks at all. On the other hand, newer immigrants and those walking dogs were much more likely to report walking every day. Surprisingly, while walking by adults is spread relatively evenly across different areas of the state, walking to school varies considerably depending on location. One important finding is that walking to school acts as an anchor for greater amounts of walking overall. Speaker Bio: Ms. McGuckin is a senior advisor and consultant to Federal, State, and local public agencies and private clients on matters related to travel behavior and evidence-based transportation policy. She specializes in assembling data to help understand travel behavior across all modes and making actionable information out of complex data sources. McGuckin has spent her 30-year career as a consultant. For nearly 15 years, she specialized in developing inputs to help forecast travel demand for major investment studies in the US and abroad as with the boutique consulting firm of Barton-Aschman Associates (1984-1997). In the 15 years since, she has run her own consultancy focused on travel behavior analysis and application for policy and planning. She is well known for her work with the US DOT and the National Household Travel Survey.

A transportation seminar presented by the USC METRANS Center for Transportation. Abstract: Although ridesharing can provide a wealth of benefits, such as reduced travel costs, congestion, and consequently less pollution, there are a number of challenges that have restricted its widespread adoption. In fact, even at a time when improving communication systems provide real-time detailed information that could be used to facilitate ridesharing, the share of work trips that use ridesharing has decreased by almost 10% in the past 30 years. In this seminar, Dr. Dessouky presents a classification and taxonomy to understand the key aspects of ridesharing systems. The objective is to present a framework that can help identify key challenges in the widespread use of ridesharing and thus foster the development of effective formal ridesharing mechanisms that would overcome these challenges and promote its widespread use. Speaker Bio: Maged M. Dessouky is a Professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Director of the Epstein Institute at USC. Dr. Dessouky has an in-depth theoretical and practical understanding of models and heuristic methods for transportation system optimization. He is the Principal Investigator of an FHWA-funded project to develop Transportation Market, a distributed system for negotiating routes and prices between consumers and providers of transportation. He is Area Editor of Computers and Industrial Engineering, ACM Transactions of Modeling and Computer Simulation and IIE Transactions, and serves on the Editorial Board of Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. He is the recipient of the 2007 Transportation Science and Logistics Best Paper Prize for his paper, ”Optimal Slack Time for Schedule-Based Transit Operations,” and is a Fellow of IIE. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.S. and B.S. degrees from Purdue University.

Presented by the METRANS transportation center based at USC and CSULB featuring Cen Feng Ng, assistant professor of economics at California State University Long Beach. Gasoline prices vary wildly throughout the world, with some countries imposing high taxes while others provide subsidies. After examining worldwide price differences in detail, this paper focuses on whether the differences in gasoline price affects border crossings between the U.S. and Mexico, which currently subsidizes gasoline. This paper finds that even though there is evidence that some U.S. residents may be incentivized to visit Mexico when the price difference is large, this is offset by the decrease in travel due to higher U.S. gasoline prices. Control variables include State Department travel warnings, the unemployment rate and other factors. The results also suggest that there is some substitution between modes, as an increase in gasoline prices is associated with an increase in pedestrian border crossings. Chen Feng Ng received her Ph.D. from UC Irvine in 2008, and her main fields of interest are urban and transportation economics. Her papers have been published in the Journal of Urban Economics and Transportation - as well as other journals. She is currently working on research related to highway design, gasoline subsidies, and the link between housing prices and consumption amenities.

A transportation seminar presented by the USC METRANS Center for Transportation. Abstract: The 1962 Highway Act required for the first time that states engage urban areas in a cooperative, and comprehensive (3C) process to plan for federal transportation infrastructure investments. While this law—and subsequent regulations—could not predict the important role that metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) occupy decades later in a notably more decentralized and multi-purposed transportation decision-making process, they did set the stage for the evolution of MPOs into more robust regional institutions. While MPOs’ growth and development were of course aided by subsequent federal legislation and such exogenous factors as the rise of social and environmental concerns related to transportation, this early regulatory framework gave these regional bodies a legal foothold in transportation decision-making from which they could further establish themselves. Speaker Bio: Gian-Claudia Sciara is a postdoc at the University of California, Davis, where she works in the Urban Land Use and Transportation Center, a research unit working to improve connections between transportation and land use planning. Her research focuses on institutional and governance questions in transportation planning, policy and finance, particularly at the regional scale, and her publications and projects address innovations in metropolitan transportation funding, implications for planning of Congressional transportation earmarking, and the complexities of regional-local planning relationships. Gian-Claudia earned a PhD in City and Regional Planning at U.C. Berkeley and holds a Masters degree from UCLA. She is an AICP certified planner and has worked as a senior transportation consultant in New York City prior to pursuing her PhD.

For well over two decades public-private partnerships (P3s) have been promoted as a means for leveraging scarce public resources for transportation infrastructure investments. Although the number of P3s has greatly increased since the 1980s, they still constitute a tiny portion of all US transportation infrastructure investments. What are the barriers to P3s, and how might they be overcome? What strategies might states and municipalities employ to expand the use of P3s? In this seminar, Kevin Holliday presents a summary of findings from a comprehensive study of P3s in California. The study includes original research on P3s; interviews of local public officials in California and people who work at P3 firms worldwide; and, detailed case studies of the Orange County Toll Roads and the South Bay Expressway in San Diego. Mr. Holliday presents the summary in the form of five lessons learned, best practices for P3 contracting, and information on the market for private capital for infrastructure. Strong market demand, broad support, and institutional capacity are key factors in effective P3s. The full study can be found here: http://goo.gl/ptMAj Presented by the USC METRANS Center

Speaker Bio: Kevin Holliday joined USC as a project administrator in 2010. Since that time he has worked on numerous research projects including "Public-Private Partnerships in California" -- a comprehensive report on P3s completed and presented to Caltrans in 2012. He is currently working on a survey report for the "National Cooperative Freight Research Program on Freight Movement in Urban Areas" which will be published in 2013. He holds a BA in Economics from Occidental College and an MA in Urban Planning, with a concentration in transportation, from UCLA.

The METRANS Transportation Center, housed at both USC and Cal State Long Beach, presents a METRANS seminar featuring Seiji Steimetz, is a Associate Professor of Economics at the California State University Long Beach. He develops a simple but modern stated-preference (SP) choice experiment to analyze the impact of traffic images on the estimated value of travel time savings (VTTS). Our results indicate that traffic images, however rudimentary, can substantially influence travel-time valuation, thus compelling further research on incorporating them into SP experimental design. Seiji Steimetz is Associate Professor of Economics at the California State University, Long Beach, and a faculty affiliate of the METRANS Transportation Center. His research interests include transportation, urban and environmental economics, and applied economics. Dr. Steimetz has published his research in leading economic and interdisciplinary journals.

ravel behavior is a phenomenon that is affected not only by complex interrelationships between urban design, land-use, and socio-economics, but also by social and psychological factors. These underlying psychological and social decision processes have been largely ignored in the land use - travel behavior literature. This may be a serious shortcoming, as research has shown that individuals in homogeneous socio-economic groups may behave differently depending on their perceptions, attitude, and preferences. Our research examines the contribution of these "hidden" factors in travel behavior through a stud of residents of neighborhoods in the vicinity of the Exposition light rail line in South Los Angeles. The results indicate that attitudes toward transit, personal safety and privacy concerns, and perceptions of neighborhood amenities all play a significant role in transit use. Speaker Bios: Marlon Boarnet is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Urban Planning at USC Price. He has studied land use-travel behavior interaction, urban growth patterns, the economic impacts of transportation infrastructure, and economic development. Boarnet edits the Journal of Regional Science and serves as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association. Doug Houston is an Assistant Professor of Planning, Policy, and Design at UC Irvine. He has studied environmental justice issues in transportation, including studies that document how communities of color are differentially disadvantaged by near-source emissions from the transportation system. Steve Spears is a Ph.D. candidate at UC Irvine. Spears' research focuses on the link between attitudes, psychological factors, and sustainable transportation

Abstract In this seminar, the speaker investigates the environmental and health impacts of truck freight transportation at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Using a combination of traffic simulation, air quality modeling and health impact assessment, we quantify some of the major social costs resulting from urban freight transportation, specifically along the Alameda corridor which connects the ports to downtown Los Angeles. We also analyze truck traffic on freeways and surface streets to estimate the health impacts caused by emissions, specifically at intervals corresponding to deadlines for the controversial Clean Truck Program, implemented by the Ports with the hopes of improving air quality in the Alameda corridor. Our results quantify for the first time both the magnitude of some of the social costs generated by drayage trucks in the Alameda corridor and the reduction in public health costs achieved by the Clean Truck Program. The results also suggest that this reduction in social costs justified replacing polluting drayage trucks and that the Clean Truck Program likely exceeded its target. Speaker Stephen G. Ritchie is a Professor of Civil Engineering, is the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine, and an Associate Director of the University of California Transportation Center. He obtained his PhD in transportation engineering from Cornell University. His recent research activities focus on statewide freight transportation modeling and forecasting, new traffic modeling approaches to better estimate GHG emissions based on limited data, and environmental and health impacts of freight transportation in the Alameda Corridor.