ACCESS 29, Fall 2006
Melanie Curry
For eighteen years, the University of California Transportation Center, with help from USDOT and Caltrans, has conducted and shared research on compelling transportation issues. During those years, the issues have grown in complexity right along with growth in population and sizes of cities.
John Landis
Upon arriving in London (or any other major English city), the first thing an American notices is how few SUVs, pickup trucks, and full-sized minivans are on the roads. This is partly because of gasoline’s high price, currently about $5.80 per US gallon, and partly because English roads and parking spaces are so narrow. However, things do seem to be changing. Sales of SUVs are rising, particularly among suburbanites with children, as are sales of seven-passenger multi-purpose vehicles, which are slightly smaller versions of American minivans.
Daniel Sperling
Climate change is creeping into the public consciousness. Arcane scientific debates are front page news. Best-selling authors and Hollywood movies feature climate change. Presidents and Prime Ministers are becoming conversant in climate change science and policy. It is time for the transport sector to become part of the solution. Opportunities to reduce climate impacts abound in transportation, with broad economic, environmental, and social benefits. We need new partnerships among industry, political leaders, and the public, and a new culture of innovation that builds synergies across technological and behavioral initiatives.
Douglas Houston,
Jun Wu,
Paul Ong, and
Arthur Winer
Air pollution control programs have helped improve many aspects of regional air quality over the past thirty years despite tremendous growth in both population and vehicle-miles traveled. However, regional strategies to confront vehicle-related pollution are proving to be insufficient to protect the health of those who live, work, attend school, or play near major roadways. Recent air pollution and epidemiological findings suggest that harmful vehicle-related pollutants and their associated adverse health effects concentrate within a couple hundred meters of heavily traveled freeways and thoroughfares. We’re just beginning to understand the health and economic costs of such localized effects, and we still know little about who is exposed to these pollutants.
Annie Decker
In 2004, I surveyed almost 800 disabled and elderly people and more than 500 caregivers in a California homecare program and asked about their transportation. The clients told story after story about feeling trapped in their homes and about being cut off from social networks, hospitals, and work. They provided a devastating snapshot of immobility shared throughout the country.
The people I surveyed live in Contra Costa County, which lies across the bay from San Francisco and contains everything from small post-industrial cities and suburbs to agricultural areas. All the survey respondents receive care through California’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, the largest such program in the country. Overseen by the state government, administered in 58 counties, and funded in part by federal block grants, IHSS spends close to $4 billion a year on more than 360,000 clients who are elderly and frail or who live with disabilities.