Policy

Jaywalking in California: History, Pedestrian Safety Trends, Law Enforcement Patterns, and Decriminalization Legislation

Santos, Mike
Lutzker, Liza
Julia Griswold
2026

This report investigates jaywalking laws in connection with traffic safety, racial equity, and street design, focusing on California. It traces the concept of "jaywalking" to an early 20th-century auto industry campaign to shift safety responsibility from drivers to pedestrians. By analyzing national and California pedestrian injury and fatality data (2009– 2022) alongside California Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) police stop data (2018–2022), the study describes demographic disparities in both pedestrian crashes and law enforcement of jaywalking. It also documents recent...

Regulating EV Charging Markets for Fairness: Incentives for Pricing and Capacity Decisions

Wang, Ruiting
Hu, Kita
Yu, Yitong
Scott Moura
2026

The transition to electric mobility calls for charging infrastructure that is both efficient and socially equitable. This paper examines fairness in electric vehicle (EV) charging station pricing and capacity through a game-theoretic perspective. We model a non-cooperative market in which competing charging service providers set prices and capacities while customers choose stations based on generalized cost, leading to a market equilibrium. We then benchmark this decentralized outcome against an idealized planner solution that jointly optimizes efficiency and equity. To align market...

Compulsory Convenience? How Large Arterials and Land Use Affect Midblock Crossing in Fushun, China

Wendy Tao
Shomik Mehndiratta
Elizabeth Deakin
2010

Abstract: This study focuses on how street design and land uses influence pedestrian behavior in a medium-sized Chinese city, Fushun. In cities throughout China, the change from workplace-managed and assigned housing to market housing has had profound effects on pedestrians. Coupled with motorization, pedestrian trips are increasingly external, pushed out of the protected space of the gated block and onto massive arterials that now carry automobiles, trucks, and buses in growing numbers. Long blocks, unenforced zebra crossings, and inadequate green time at traffic signals do not equitably...

Best Practices for the Public Management of Electric Scooters

Karl Reinhardt
Elizabeth Deakin
2020

This research projects evaluates the social, environmental, and safety impacts of shared electric scooters (e-scooters)’ through a literature review, a nationwide scan of state and local laws and regulations, and a case study of Oakland’s experience with e-scooters, including an analysis of the city’s user survey and our own in-depth interviews. E-scooters offer an enjoyable, low-cost travel option, but are used mainly by young, affluent, white males. To improve equity, cities are requiring e-scooter rental companies to serve low-income and minority communities and some further mandate...

Socioeconomic Differences in Household Automobile Ownership Rates: Implications for Evacuation Policy

Elizabeth Deakin
Steven Raphael
Alan Berube
2006

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has laid bare many of the disparities that continue to separate Americans by race and class. One disparity that was immediately apparent in Katrina’s aftermath concerned the size and composition of the area’s population lacking access to an automobile. These households, largely dependent on the limited emergency public transportation available to evacuate the city in advance of the storm, were those most likely to be left behind. In New Orleans, this population seemed quite large in size – and overwhelmingly black and poor.

An integrated assessment of factors affecting modal choice: towards a better understanding of the causal effects of built environment

Samira Ramezani
Barbara Pizzo
Elizabeth Deakin
2018

This paper discusses the methodological challenges in understanding causal relationships between urban form and travel behavior and uses a holistic quasi-experimental approach to investigate the separable marginal influence of each of several urban form factors on mode choice as well as the complex relationships between those factors and a wide range of personal traits. Data analysis and models are used to reveal the effect of such interactions on mode choice for both work and non-work trips in Rome, Italy. It is found that population density does not have a significant marginal positive...

Economic and Travel Impacts of Bypass Roads: A Comparative Study of Israel and the U.S.

Pnina Plaut
Elizabeth Deakin
2006

In this study we are documenting and comparing the economic and travel impacts of bypass roads in the United States and Israel on the towns near which they are constructed. Using historical research, on-site observations, interviews, surveys, and data analyses we consider the effects of bypasses on local and through traffic, travel patterns, development patterns, and the local urban economy in the immediately affected communities. We aim elucidate how road design, market forces, local politics, land use policies, planning and zoning and location-specific factors interact to produce the...

Public Health Sector Influence in Transportation Decision-Making: The Case of Health Impact Assessment

Carolyn McAndrews
Elizabeth Deakin
2020

Health impact assessment (HIA) is a method of analyzing and communicating the potential health-related outcomes of policies and projects in a variety of fields, including transportation. The transportation policy process already has formal routines to incorporate information about air quality, noise, safety, and other health issues. However, the HIA method could broaden the set of issues under consideration (e.g., physical activity), the types of decisions assessed, and the actors involved. In theory, HIA seeks to influence transportation decisions and serve as a platform for public...

Inhalation Intake of Ambient Air Pollution in California's South Coast Air Basin

Julian Marshall
Patrick Granvold
Abigail Hoats
Thomas McKone
Elizabeth Deakin
William Nazaroff
2006

Reliable estimates of inhalation intake of air pollution and its distribution among a specified population are important for environmental epidemiology, health risk assessment, urban planning, and environmental policy. We computed distributional characteristics of the inhalation intake of five pollutants for a group of ∼25,000 people (∼29,000 person-days) living in California's South Coast Air Basin. Our approach incorporates four main inputs: temporally resolved information about people's location (latitude and longitude), microenvironment, and activity level; temporally and spatially...

Transfer of Innovative Policies between Cities to Promote Sustainability: Case Study Evidence

Greg Marsden
Karen Frick
Anthony May
Elizabeth Deakin
2010

This paper describes how cities approach the challenging task of identifying, considering, and adopting innovative transport policies. Drawing on political science literature, the paper begins by establishing a framework for analyzing the process of policy transfer and policy learning. Cities were selected on the basis of their reputation for having adopted innovative policies. Data were collected from project reports and in-depth interviews with 40 professionals comprising planners, consultants, and operators in 11 cities across North America and northern Europe. This paper presents the...