The Institute of Transportation Studies Berkeley is excited to announce that 14 projects, totaling $1.8 million in funding, have been awarded this year under SB1 and AB104 funds. ITS Berkeley has now awarded over $10M in UC ITS funding.
Of the 14 projects, 10 were funded under SB1 and four under AB104.
SB1 Projects:
Convening UC ITS Expertise to Inform California’s Transportation Funding Future
$125,000
PI: Susan Shaheen, Director of Transportation Sustainability Research Center
This project will convene UC ITS expertise to examine transportation funding challenges and opportunities facing California over the coming decade. Through a combination of literature review, policy scanning, expert interviews, UC ITS scholar convenings, stakeholder engagement, workshop activities, and translational products, the project will synthesize current knowledge regarding transportation finance and identify priority areas for future research and policy development.
The effort is intentionally broad and interdisciplinary. Rather than focusing exclusively on one funding mechanism, the project will assess a portfolio of two to three transportation funding approaches (e.g., road user charge, vehicle registration fees, sales taxes on vehicle purchases, congestion pricing) and explore how these approaches interact with equity goals, climate and electrification objectives, governance considerations, technological change, and public acceptance. The scope will be narrowed to focus on key strategies that are most relevant to the current funding climate in California.
End product: A California Transportation Funding Research Roadmap designed to guide future UC ITS research investments, support policymakers, and strengthen collaboration among researchers, agencies, and stakeholders.
Right Place, Right Process: Assessing early trends from AB 130’s CEQA exemption
$96,189
Ben Metcalf, Managing Director, Terner Center for Housing Innovation
The Terner Center will produce the first systematic, statewide empirical assessment of AB 130’s new CEQA exemption for infill housing and, if data permits, place it in comparative context with prior CEQA exemption and streamlining provisions.
The project will use LCI’s CEQAnet database as the primary data source. It will leverage newly capable AI-assisted extraction methods, validated by the project team. Data will be matched to Housing and Community Development (HCD) Annual Progress Report (APR) building permit records. The project will:
(1) characterize the projects filing under AB 130 by unit count, typology, affordability, and tenure to the extent the data support; (2) describe the unit-weighted geographic distribution of these projects against population density, VMT, median household income, and TCAC Opportunity categories; (3) benchmark these patterns against multifamily housing completions in 2000–2019 reconstructed from Census; and (4) where data quality permits, compare with selected pre-2025 streamlining provisions using descriptive statistics. Up to six interviews with developers and land-use experts may help contextualize quantitative findings, and the project will explore policy implications of the findings to inform any potential refinements to the law.
End product: Findings will be synthesized in a Terner Center research brief targeted at a generalist housing policy audience, mirrored as a UC ITS report on eScholarship, and accompanied by a summary blog with an interactive map. Cleaned housing project data will be made available for other researchers. The project team will offer briefings to state agency and legislative staff and to the ITS community.
BayPass++: Market Design for Incentive-Compatible, Integrated and Equitable Mobility
$97,124
Manxi Wu, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
This project expands BayPass through a novel market-design framework that investigates how an integrated mobility pass should be priced and how revenue should be allocated across participating mobility operators. The framework is flexible: it can incorporate the current 22 Bay Area transit agencies and can also integrate shared micromobility and on-demand mobility (e.g., ride-hailing, autonomous on-demand services) as first/last-mile complements to transit. The regional coordinator (MTC/SFCTA) serves as the mechanism designer, choosing a pass price for riders and an allocation of pass revenue across operators to maximize total rider welfare gain subject to rider participation (no participating rider is made worse off) and operator participation (each operator receives at least its status-quo fare revenue).
The work proceeds through four stages. Stage 1 specifies the mechanism design model with explicit notation for rider groups, mobility operators, prices, and incentive constraints for both rider and operator participation. Stage 2 calibrates the model's primitives using individual-level Clipper data from BayPass Phase 1 and Phase 2, supplemented by a targeted survey to capture demographic information and demand for non-transit modes (micromobility and ride-hailing) that are not observable in Clipper data. Stage 3 evaluates three integration scenarios (transit only; transit plus micromobility; full integration with micromobility and ride-hailing) under uniform and group-differentiated pricing, with
explicit analysis of vertical equity (income), horizontal equity (urban vs. suburban geographies), and the trade-off between external subsidies and equity outcomes. Stage 4 stress-tests results through parameter perturbation, alternative behavioral specifications, and scenario analysis.
End product: The work concludes with a policy brief tailored for San Francisco County Transportation Agency (SFCTA) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) that translates the framework into concrete pricing, revenue-allocation, and equity-targeting recommendations for the next phase of BayPass and its integration with emerging mobility services.
Transitioning from the Gas Tax: A Modeling Framework for Road User Charge Design in California
$94,776
Alexandre Bayen, Director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute
California’s transportation funding model faces a structural challenge as fuel-tax revenues decline with rapid vehicle electrification and improved fuel efficiency. Road User Charges (RUCs), which assess fees based on miles driven rather than fuel consumed, offer a promising alternative but raise difficult questions about revenue adequacy, behavioral response, equity, and practical implementation. This project develops a rigorous modeling framework to evaluate alternative RUC designs for California. The research has three components. First, it synthesizes domestic and international RUC programs, road-pricing theory, and equity frameworks into a unified taxonomy of policy instruments. Second, it develops mathematical models calibrated to California’s fleet composition, travel demand, fuel-tax revenues, and network conditions. These models will evaluate both static revenue-neutral rates and dynamic behavioral responses, including changes in VMT, vehicle choice, EV adoption, congestion, and distributional impacts across income groups, regions, and vehicle classes. Third, the project engages California transportation agencies and stakeholders to ensure that the modeling framework reflects operational constraints and policy priorities.
End product: The project will produce a rigorous analysis and unified modeling framework for comparing RUC alternatives and support equitable and revenue-sustainable transportation funding decisions.
Mobility Science Framework for Integrating Automated Vehicles with Public Transit: Leveraging Demand Heterogeneity and Social Networks
$95,905
Marta Gonzalez, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and City and Regional Planning
This project proposes a data-driven framework for incentivizing equitable AV-transit integration in San Francisco, developed in partnership with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA). Overall, the unique component is data driven scenario planning, segmenting the users by their mobility lifestyles and social network characteristics. This project advances the existing body of knowledge by:
1. Incorporating the characteristics of individual riders that encapsulate their travel profile considering their demographics, and why they’re traveling through their trip purpose. This mobility science-based approach helps to characterize heterogeneity at the trip-level, and to facilitate more sustainable and equitable operations of AVs at the system level.
2. Integrating AMoD systems with fixed-schedule transit networks during the trip assignment for riders, to enable opportunities for trip-chaining with transit into AMoD operations.
3. Leveraging the underlying social network structure to increase the quality of service from the ride- sharing perspective, by pooling rider-requests that are similar in their social ties in addition to being suitably located spatiotemporally.
The project is organized into four broad technical tasks, with the remaining three tasks allocated to engagement with external organizations (SFCTA in our case), final deliverables, and research dissemination, respectively.
End product: A final report detailing the problem, challenges, results, and methods; a two-page policy brief targeting SFCTA, transit agencies and AVs operators to provide actionable recommendations for leveraging the adoption increase of AVs integrated with public transit; and two stakeholder workshops to gather input on priorities and disseminate research findings, encouraging collaboration between public and private transportation stakeholders.
Evaluating the Safety Impact of California's AB 413 “Daylighting Law” Using Near-Miss Conflict Data in Berkeley and Oakland
$100,000
Julia Griswold , Director of Safe Transportation Research Education Center
This study will provide the first quantitative California-specific evaluation of the safety effect of daylighting, using video-based near-miss conflict data from Quality Counts (QC). QC's DataLens platform automatically detects vehicle-vehicle, vehicle-pedestrian, and vehicle- bicyclist near-miss events from intersection video, returning timestamped events tagged with surrogate safety measures such as Time-to-Collision (TTC) and Post-Encroachment Time (PET). Near-miss conflicts are 100–1,000 times more frequent than crashes, allowing meaningful safety evaluation within a single year (Tarko, 2018; Kittelson & Associates, 2025).
The study addresses two complementary research questions. First, we ask whether near-miss conflicts decreased at California intersections following AB 413 implementation. Using QC's intersection study archive, we will identify intersections in Berkeley and Oakland that were studied between 2021 and 2024 (pre–AB 413) and were painted with red curbs in 2025-2026. We will then work with QC to re-evaluate near-misses at those same locations in 2026-2027 (post-implementation). We will compare near-miss rates and conflict severity at these locations. Second, we ask whether the visual marking of daylighting zones matters. Berkeley has now painted nearly all its 1,700 daylighting zones, but Oakland has many block-end locations where the law applies yet the curb remains unpainted (Berkeleyside, 2026). We will collect new 2026 video data and compare near-miss rates. We will analyze the data to determine: 1) how frequently a vehicle is illegally parked, and 2) do near-misses increase during periods when a vehicle is illegally parked in the daylighting zone versus periods when the zone is clear.
Final product: Together, these analyses will provide direct evidence on whether daylighting works in California and whether painting the curb red is necessary to realize the law's benefits. The findings will be of immediate value to SFMTA, OakDOT, Berkeley Public Works, Caltrans, and other California jurisdictions still implementing AB 413.
Passenger-Centric Analysis and Optimization of BART Schedules
$40,729
Chiwei Yan, Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
This project builds a novel data-driven, passenger-centric tool for BART scheduling and performance analysis. It has two components. The first develops statistical models that use BART hourly trip data and real-time vehicle ETA data to estimate passengers’ station-time-specific willingness to wait for the next train and to infer latent demand lost due to prolonged waiting times. Building on these estimates, the second component develops an efficient optimization framework based on the PI’s new queueing model for general on-off systems with delay-sensitive customers. The framework optimizes train schedules, including headways and dwell times, to maximize ridership while accounting for heterogeneous willingness to wait across stations and times. Preliminary April 2026 estimates for the Yellow Line suggest that 3.30% of total latent demand is lost due to long waiting times, including 2.47% on weekdays and 7.85% on weekends. Optimized schedules can recover much of this lost demand without adding vehicles.
Final product: The proposed 12-month project will produce validated estimates of demand and passenger patience, an optimization prototype, scenario analysis results for BART operations, detailed schedule-change recommendations for BART staff, a practitioner-facing UC ITS report, and an academic journal article for submission to a top operations research outlet.
Advancing ADS Safety Reporting Standards: From 70,000 Miles of Real-World AV Operation to Policy Guidance
$58,496
Peggy Wang, Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology researcher
California is the state hosting the world's most active automated driving system (ADS) deployments, yet no standardized framework exists for evaluating and reporting ADS safety performance from real-world operational data. Current regulatory reporting requirements focus primarily on crash outcomes and disengagement events, which are insufficient for characterizing system safety across thousands of miles of urban operation. This project aims to translate findings from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority's (CCTA) Automated Driving Systems Demonstration Program into practice-ready guidance for California regulators and operators. The program, funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation, developed and applied a multi-metric surrogate safety measure (SSM) evaluation framework to over 70,000 miles of real-world ADS operation in Contra Costa County, California.
Final product: This project will deliver three outputs: a structured three-workshop series engaging California DMV, transit agencies, ADS operators, and county transportation authorities; a Draft ADS Safety Reporting Framework specifying which safety metrics operators should report and how; and an ADS Safety Reporting Policy Brief released as a California PATH technical report. The workshop series will also introduce the SSM metric mapping against SFCTA’s conceptual AV permitting framework, providing an evidence base to strengthen existing regulatory efforts.
Selection and Outcomes of Households in America's Proliferating Exurban Communities
$99,871
Max Buchholz, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning
Exurban communities on the fringes of America’s largest urban areas are a key source of affordable homeownership opportunities in these regions, but are located far away from good paying jobs. They are also the fastest growing parts of most major cities. Nonetheless, we know very little about who is moving to these places, and how locating in an exurb impacts people’s outcomes. This project will fill these gaps through three inter-related papers. The first paper will look at selection into the exurbs – who is moving to exurban communities, and how has this changed over the last 50 years. Second, how does relocating into (or out of) an exurb change adults’ outcomes. In the short term we will look at the tradeoffs households make among commuting, housing costs, and income, while our long-term analysis will add wealth and debt as key considerations. Finally, this project will examine how moving to the exurbs impacts children’s outcomes. This will entail both short-term analysis of changes in their time use (e.g. how does moving to an exurb change the time they spend studying, playing outside, watching TV) as well as long-term analysis of their outcomes in adulthood (e.g. income, education).
Final product: This project will have deliverables for academic and policy/community audiences. It will produce three academic articles and a report co-authored with Urban Habitat, a nonprofit organization that supports community movements in the Bay Area around transportation justice and housing affordability. This product will build on previous reports, with new data and analysis. It will draw primarily on the analysis conducted in the academic papers.
City and County Pavement Improvement Center (UC Davis and UC Berkeley Joint Project)
$85,000
John Harvey, UC Pavement Research Center Professor and Past Director and Laura Melendy, UC Berkeley TechTransfer Director
The City and County Pavement Improvement Center (CCPIC) helps local agencies better repair and maintain California’s roadways: https://ccpic.ucdavis.edu/
AB104 Projects:
Building a Sustainable Future for California Public Transit
$160,000
PI: Kari Watkins, UC Davis
UC Berkeley PIs: Susan Shaheen, Transportation Sustainability Research Center and Daniel Rodriguez, ITS Berkeley Director
This project seeks to reimagine public transit as a central backbone of urban transportation systems and a service that can be relied on by most Californians. The research program has two key objectives: 1) identify sustainable funding and governance models for public transit in California in the near- and long-term and 2) help transit compete more effectively with other modes for street space and customers. Researchers will meet these objectives through five tracks of work: case studies of public transit funding, analyzing institutional design considerations for regional transit governance, exploring the congestion pricing program recently implemented in Manhattan for application elsewhere, evaluating impacts of various policies intended to increase ridership, and identifying transit service gaps across the state based on governance areas. https://ucits.org/public-transit-initiative/
Towards More Credible VMT Forecasts for Project-Level Analysis in California
$480,045
PI: Daniel Chatman, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design Interim Dean
UC Berkeley PI: Marta Gonzalez, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and City and Regional Planning
UC ITS aims to improve the credibility and accuracy of VMT forecasts used in project-level environmental review across California. The research focuses on both land development projects and transportation infrastructure projects, using emerging data sources — particularly mobile phone location data — alongside traditional methods to produce more rigorous, transparent, and policy-ready VMT estimates. https://ucits.org/towards-more-credible-vmt-forecasts-for-project-level-...
Sustaining Light-Duty Zero-Emission Vehicle Adoption in California
$140,000
PI: Gil Tal, UC Davis
UC Berkeley PI: Ethan Elkind, Director of the Climate Program at CLEE, UC Berkeley
UC ITS researchers will use advanced modeling tools to assess how economic conditions, sociodemographic trends, market dynamics and state policy interventions influence vehicle ownership and fleet turnover across both new and used EV markets. The research will evaluate the effectiveness of monetary and non-monetary incentives, charging infrastructure investments, and other policy strategies in sustaining California’s momentum toward its 100 percent ZEV goal reaffirmed in Executive Order N-27-25. Particular attention will be given to equity and affordability, including how policy designs differentially affect lower-income households, disadvantaged communities, and buyers in the secondary vehicle market. Findings will provide actionable guidance to help state policymakers target limited resources effectively while advancing climate goals and supporting a more accessible and affordable clean transportation transition. https://ucits.org/light-duty-zev-initiative/
Supporting California’s Transition to Zero-Emission Commercial Vehicles
$160,000
PI: Jean-Daniel Saphores, UC Irvine
UC Berkeley PI: Tim Lipman, Transportation Sustainability Research Center Director
As California reassesses how to sustain progress under changing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions policy conditions, policymakers will need better tools to understand which strategies can most effectively accelerate the transition to cleaner commercial vehicles while balancing economic, energy, and equity goals. This initiative will help identify the most effective, cost-efficient, and equitable approaches for maintaining momentum in decarbonizing its medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicle fleet. The research examines the full ecosystem of zero-emission truck adoption — including fleet decision-making, charging and fueling infrastructure, vehicle technologies and total cost of ownership, and the health and equity impacts of emissions in disadvantaged communities — through an integrated, behaviorally representative modeling framework.
This research will investigate how medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles operate in California and their economics in order to better design and target policies to advance cleaner solutions. https://ucits.org/heavy-duty-zet-initiative/