Policy

Assembly Bill (AB) 285 (Friedman, 2019) requires the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) to submit a report to the Legislature by January 31, 2022, that includes the following:An overview of the California Transportation Plan (CTP). An overview of all regional Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCS) and any alternative planning strategies, as needed. An assessment of how the implementation of the CTP and regional plans “will influence the configuration of the statewide integrated multimodal transportation system.”  A “review of the potential impacts and opportunities for...

A Brief History of Transportation Policy and Institutions presents the development of transportation systems in the United States, with particular attention to California. The review includes key technological advances in transportation and the institutions that were developed to implement them. The paper also discusses the problem of organizational inertia and the issues associated with changing organizational culture to better reflect the problems of the day. Review of Statewide Transportation Plans for California reviews the most recently adopted CTP and other key transportation plans...

Inflation and increased fuel economy have reduced the buying power of the revenues collected from state and federal motor fuel taxes. Because fuel taxes are almost always collected on a per-gallon basis, in most states they must be raised by specific acts of the legislature and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the political support necessary to raise them. A number of states have experimented with fuel taxes that adjust automatically by being indexed to the price of gasoline, to the consumer price index, or to some indicator of highway construction and maintenance costs. This...

Urban planners are increasingly concerned about the sprawling suburban development in metropolitan areas around the world, which they often blame for growing traffic congestion and excessive highway investment needs. This dissertation seeks to shed light on this issue by studying the relationship between morning commute congestion and urban form. The causes and consequences of traffic congestion have been extensively studied in the economics and engineering literatures. Unfortunately, most conclusions have been drawn from very idealized models, which either fail to consider adequately the...