This white paper reconsiders the equity of road pricing by distinguishing between fairness and affordability—two concepts that are otherwise often conflated. A fair price assigns costs in proportion to the burdens a user imposes on others; an affordable price is one that users can pay without hardship. While both are important, these are distinct objectives, and treating them as interchangeable can obscure judgments about whether pricing is morally or ethically correct. Applying this framework suggests congestion pricing is more equitable than flat VMT charges because it better aligns payments with the social costs of driving. While congestion pricing may raise affordability concerns for some users, these concerns can be addressed through targeted redistribution of toll revenues. By contrast, unpriced roads and poorly targeted charges allow drivers to impose substantial external costs on others, undermining fairness even as they appear more affordable.
This white paper examines the successes and failures of road pricing strategies in California and the United States, with implications for congestion pricing across California. It evaluates nine case studies spanning feasibility studies, operational HOT lane programs, and the country's first large-scale cordon pricing zone. We address the conditions that favor pricing, barriers, outcomes, and how costs and benefits are distributed using case studies in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo County, Alameda County, New York City, and Northern Virginia. We find that successful pricing programs have sustained political champions, state enabling legislation, and benefits visible to identifiable users. Revenue allocation, not toll structure, is the primary determinant of whether pricing is regressive or progressive. No pricing program reviewed was repealed after implementation. We conclude that advancing road pricing in California will require clear state leadership and supportive coalitions.
This discussion paper argues that cities should discourage off-street parking by levying a tax — a parking impact fee — on new development. Parking generates environmental and social costs or externalities, and developers, left to their own devices, will provide too many spaces from a societal perspective. A parking impact fee can account for these externalities and provide incentives for developers to reduce the oversupply of parking. One practical way to implement such a fee is to repurpose the transportation impact fees that cities already levy on new development. Rather than the current practice of charging a fee for each housing unit or square foot, which discourages housing and commercial development, cities should charge for each new parking space — discouraging parking instead.
Automated vehicles are no longer a “coming soon” technology; they are an operational reality reshaping the physical and digital real estate of our cities. The question is no longer if the technology will work, but how we will govern the complex ecosystem it inhabits. The 2026 UCLA Arrowhead Symposium on New Mobility, Automated Vehicles, and Cities shifted the focus beyond technological hype and market speculation to the urgent work of public stewardship.
“Major transit stop”: how these three words are defined determines what can be built where, throughout much of California. In order to address housing supply constraints, the state legislature has enacted a number of laws that streamline approval and remove zoning constraints in areas close to high-quality transit. But what, exactly, is a “major transit stop”? Planners, developers, and elected officials construe the sparse definition in state law in many ways — though genuine interpretive disagreement, due to modeling and data constraints, and/or in order to serve political goals of encouraging or stymying development. Differences in interpreting the definition of “major transit stop” collectively make a big difference in what areas are covered by state zoning incentives. A maximal approach to defining “major transit stop” grows the eligible area by over three times more than a minimal approach. The area within half a mile of a major transit stop has generally increased over time. But areas with low vehicle travel are doing more to drive affordable housing eligibility than areas with quality transit. Finally, tying transit service to land use regulations has created a perverse incentive to cut transit service in order to avoid state housing mandates.
Transportation provides physical links between geographic places and across geographic scales. Mobility allows people to meet their needs by providing physical access to opportunities, goods, and services. An abundance policy for transportation should support broader abundance through access: making it easier for everyone to get to what they need. Allowing people to access their needs means 1) supplying more mobility choices, especially increasing the quality of more affordable and efficient choices, and 2) supporting land use policy and government programs that facilitate access within neighborhoods, multimodal hubs, or over smaller distances.
UCLA has been a leader in transportation research and education for better than a century. This history spans five distinct eras: (i) beginning the in 1920s with a focus on street traffic; (ii) expanding after World War II to encompass traffic safety, environmental issues, and transportation engineering; (iii) focusing on the social and behavioral aspects of travel in the 1970s and 1980s; (iv) establishing a new transportation research center focused on policy and planning from the early 1990s; (v) and finally becoming part of a multidisciplinary, multi-campus research consortium in the mid-2010s. This white paper documents that history and the key individuals who made it possible.
Walking and cycling are the ultimate in sustainable transportation. From a societal perspective, they are practically zero carbon, and emit no harmful air pollutants. They require minimal space on the street and for parked bicycles. And it costs cities little to provide infrastructure for sidewalks and bicycle lanes. From the individual perspective, traveling by foot or bicycle is free or low cost. And it helps people integrate physical activity into their daily routines.
How can mayors, city officials, and other policymakers realize this potential and encourage more people to walk and cycle in safety? This playbook uses a new source – Google Environmental Insights Explorer – to provide data-driven guidance on how to encourage active transportation in cities around the world. Based on data on walking and cycling in 11,487 cities from 121 countries across six continents, it highlights success stories from a range of geographic and socio-economic contexts, including cities whose efforts have flown under the radar and attracted little attention to date.
U.S. freeways have come under scrutiny for their adverse impacts on low-income neighborhoods of color, primarily in urban centers. This article offers a comparative historical analysis of the impact of freeways on two communities in Southern California, which were ethnically diverse suburbs. Planning authorities in Pasadena and Pacoima chose freeway routes that displaced a greater share of households of color than the proposed alternatives. Meanwhile, neighboring white, wealthier communities successfully influenced routing decisions in consequential ways. Beyond the visible and immediate effects of the freeways, social inequity and environmental degradation persist in both neighborhoods today.
