Environment

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...

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...

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...

Zero-Emission Bus Implementation Guidebook for California Transit Fleets

Lipman, Timothy, PhD
Rogers, Emily, MS
2023

Transit bus operations in California are experiencing new challenges due to economic conditions and the ongoing global pandemic. A confluence of factors has created a focus on this critical public-needs serving industry, due to state and local efforts to reduce emissions of pollutants and climate-changing gases. Transit bus operations in California provide essential and additional useful services that offer critical mobility to needy populations (elderly and handicapped) as well as many other groups for whom transit buses provide the most economical, convenient, and low-emission options....

Transit to California’s National Parks: An Assessment of Visitation and Sociodemographic Barriers

Zhuang, Winnie
2024

California boasts nine national parks that are home to a plethora of recreational, cultural, and professional opportunities. It is no surprise that national parks draw in millions of recreational and non-recreational trips from across the country and internationally, however how visitors choose to arrive at these federal lands is a major consideration for land management, policy, and infrastructure decisions. According to the National Park Service’s Visitor Use Statistics, an overwhelming majority of visitors arrive by automobile. Alternative transportation options to national parks in...

Airports and the General Conformity Process

Amin, Ratna S.
2001

Air quality conformity refers to the process wherein federally supported plans, programs and projects are shown to meet the air quality requirements of the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) and the applicable State Implementation Plan (SIP). Transportation conformity refers to actions approved or funded by the Federal Highway Administration or the Federal Transit Administration. General conformity refers to projects approved or funded by other federal agencies. Airport projects are usually subject to general conformity rules. The general conformity process has provoked several contradictory...

Linkages Between Transportation Planning and the Environment

Wachs, Martin
1999

Transportation investments have historically been among society’s most important contributors to environmental improvement, but today transportation programs and projects are more often of concern as sources of major environmental problems. Over the past thirty years, since the enactment of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the first Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), the relationship between transportation planning and environmental policy making has continuously become ever more complex and problematic. Until about 1835, when early public transport was just being...