Infrastructure

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...

Motor fuel taxes at state and federal levels have traditionally been earmarked for transportation investments, supporting road construction, maintenance, and operations, and increasingly public transit. Recently, elected officials have been reluctant to raise fuel taxes despite increases in the cost of transportation programs. Other forms of support, especially borrowing and local sales taxes are playing larger roles in transportation finance. Raising fuel taxes would be more effective, efficient and equitable than the alternatives that are increasingly more popular.

California law (SB 743) requires school districts to measure the impact of school construction on the production of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and identify feasible mitigation measures that eliminate or substantially reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) generated. This study analyzes 301 new schools constructed between 2008-2018 with respect to four VMT mitigation measures identified by the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) known to minimize VMT (proximity to high quality transit areas, proximity to roads with bicycle facilities, walkability scores, and...

Wildfires have become a perpetual crisis for communities across California. For life-threatening wildfires, mass evacuation often becomes the only viable option to protect lives. Yet, looking back at recent events, including the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, there are significant challenges associated with the evacuation process, such as multi-agency coordination, agency-resident communication, and management of extraordinarily high amounts of traffic within a short period of time. Currently, emergency planners use evacuation models that are typically based on existing...