Environment

Future of Mobility White Paper

Shaheen, Susan, PhD
Totte, Hannah
Stocker, Adam
2018

Transportation is arguably experiencing its most transformative revolution since the introduction of the automobile. Concerns over climate change and equity are converging with dramatic technological advances. Although these changes – including shared mobility and automation – are rapidly altering the mobility landscape, predictions about the future of transportation are complex, nuanced, and widely debated. California is required by law to renew the California Transportation Plan (CTP), updating its models and policy considerations to reflect industry changes every five years. This...

SB 743 Implementation: Challenges and Opportunities

Barbour, Elisa
Chatman, Daniel G.
Doggett, Sarah
Yip, Stella
Santana, Manuel
2019

California’s Senate Bill (SB) 743, enacted in 2013, marks a historic shift in how the traffic impacts of development projects are to be evaluated and mitigated statewide. To help achieve state climate policy and sustainability goals, SB 743 eliminates traffic delay as an environmental impact under the California Environmental Quality Act. State implementing guidelines for SB 743 instead require an assessment of vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The adoption of the guidelines sparked debate and raised far-reaching questions about development planning. Our research consisted of four parts. First...

Moving Towards A More Sustainable California: Exploring Livability, Accessibility, and Prosperity

Shaheen, Susan
Finson, Rachel
Bhattacharyya, Abhinav
Jaffee, Mark
2016

The Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley conducted a series of tasks to assist the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) with an understanding of prosperity, accessibility, and livability metrics. Research findings were collected through a combination of literature reviews and expert interviews. Researchers found that prosperity, accessibility, and livability metrics all involve a component of cooperation with partner jurisdictions. A flexible approach that accounts for local and corridor considerations and evolves over time is emphasized. The white...

Potential Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions from Optimizing Urban Transit Networks

Madanat, Samer
Horvath, Arpad
Mao, Chao
Cheng, Han
2016

Public transit systems with efficient designs and operating plans can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to low-occupancy transportation modes, but many current transit systems have not been designed to reduce environmental impacts. This motivates the study of the benefits of design and operational approaches for reducing the environmental impacts of transit systems. For example, transit agencies may replace level-of-service (LOS) by vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as a criterion in evaluating design and operational changes. Previous studies have demonstrated in an idealized...

Reducing Emissions through Monitoring and Predictive Modeling of Gate Operations of Idle Aircraft: A Case Study on San Francisco International Airport

Rakas, Jasenka, PhD
Achatz Antonelli, Pietro
Walia, Chanan
Rouzbahani, Parham
Gikas, George
2023

The use of airport gate electrification infrastructure in the form of ground power (GP) and preconditioned air (PCA) systems can reduce energy and maintenance costs, emissions, and health risks by limiting the use of aircraft auxiliary power unit (APU) engines at the gate. However, their benefits can only be gained when they are actually being used; otherwise, pilots keep APUs on to fulfill their aircraft’s demands for electrical power and air conditioning. GP and PCA systems require a large initial infrastructure investment to increase energy efficiency, and they are installed with the...

Charging up the Central Coast: Policy solutions to improve electric vehicle charging access in Watsonville

Sarode, Shruti, MS
Segal, Katie, MPP
Elkind, Ethan, JD
2023

California's goal to eliminate internal combustion engine sales by 2035 poses challenges for lower- and moderate-income residents, hindering their access to electric vehicles (EVs). Barriers include limited EV charging stations, exacerbated by lower home ownership and inadequate grid infrastructure in lower-income communities. To address this, UC Berkeley School of Law's Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) partnered with the City of Watsonville. Due to its location, demographics, and ambitious policy goals, Watsonville represents a potential model and case study for...

Environmental Justice & Transportation: A Citizen's Handbook

Cairns, Shannon
Greig, Jessica
Wachs, Martin
2003

Environmental justice is an increasingly important element of policy making in transportation. It is not specific to any mode of transportation, particular community, or single policy issue. It is fundamentally about fairness toward the disadvantaged and often addresses the exclusion of racial and ethnic minorities from decision making. The federal government has identified environmental justice as an important goal in transportation, and local and regional governments must incorporate environmental justice into transportation programs. Because ideas about justice differ between...

Assessing the Functionality of Transit and Shared Mobility Systems after Earthquakes

Soga, Kenichi, PhD
Comfort, Louise, PhD
Zhao, Bingyu, PhD
Tang, Yili (Kelly), PhD
Han, Tianyu
2024

Located within the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, California's transportation infrastructure, especially in the Bay Area, is susceptible to earthquakes. A review of current research and stakeholder interviews revealed a growing awareness of emergency preparedness among local jurisdictions and transit agencies in recent years. However, many have yet to formalize and publish their recovery plans. This study introduces an agent-based multimodal transportation simulation tool to enhance post-earthquake transportation resilience. Integrating a road network simulator with a metro...

Transit-Based Smart Parking in the San Francisco Bay Area: an Assessment of User Demand and Behavioral Effects

Rodier, Caroline J.
Shaheen, Susan A.
Eaken, Amanda M.
2004

This paper presents early findings from an application of advanced parking technologies to increase effective parking capacity at a transit station during the first half of 2004 in the San Francisco Bay Area (CA). It begins with an extensive review of the literature related to transit-based smart parking management systems to illustrate the range of system configurations and their potential travel, economic, and environmental effects. Two important conclusions from this review are: (1) lack of parking spaces at transit stations may be a significant constraint to transit use and (2) pre-...

Using Automated Vehicle (AV) Technology to Smooth Traffic Flow and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Almatrudi, Sulaiman
Parvate, Kanaad
Rothchild, Daniel
Vijay, Upadhi
2022

Passenger and heavy-duty vehicles make up 36% of California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Reducing emissions from vehicular travel is therefore paramount for any path towards carbon neutrality. Efforts to reduce GHGs by encouraging mode shift or increasing vehicle efficiency are, and will continue to be, a critical part of decarbonizing the transportation sector. Emerging technologies are creating an opportunity to reduce GHGs. Human driving behaviors in congested traffic have been shown to create stop-and-go waves. When waves form, cars periodically slow down (sometimes to a stop) and...