Our multi-campus research team shared preliminary results from our work about the evacuation experiences of transit riders with LA county transportation and emergency management professionals yesterday! Can’t wait to release these findings publicly later this summer

Same street, two years apart. Rue Charles Moureu.

There are no distractions. It's all bad. Systematically stripping trans people of their rights, guys in balaclavas shoving any brown person with a tattoo into a ummarked vans, ending healthcare for millions. It's all in service of fascism and technofeudalism. It's all one thing. That's the point.

Study on London 20 mph limits shows: - collisions ⬇️ 35% - casualties ⬇️ 36% - fatal/serious injuries ⬇️ 34% - child casualties ⬇️ 46% - child deaths ⬇️ 75% - walkers, cyclists, motorcyclists killed/seriously injured ⬇️ 28% etsc.eu/20mph-limits...

So much is terrible these days but it's also jacaranda season in Los Angeles, which is beautiful from the ground and absolutely stunning from air.

"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants. Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."

As federal data infrastructure is gutted, we'll lose a window into the vast local health disparities. But those disparities will remain because place is an engine of health provision and stratification, not just an analytic vessel. New essay from me in UAR: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🚨 Job alert: UCLA ITS is hiring a founding Staff Director for a new parking policy center! Work with top scholars, shape reform, and carry on the legacy of Donald Shoup. 🅿️ Learn more & apply by May 17: www.its.ucla.edu/202...

A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond. I hope you’ll read and share the piece. stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...

Yes, the famously private freeway system and the famously private airport systems

Re-upping this, given news from the UK today, because it investigates what is and who decides the definition of "biological sex," which is anything but straightforward.

This seems like a good time to remind people that the Stanford Prison Experiment was based on fraudulent data. The "guards" were cruel to the prisoners because Zimbardo told them what he wanted to find with his research, and because they *wanted* to help him prove his point.

Just finished "Tested" and highly recommend. This theme, brought up about the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany, echos throughout: "Scholars of this period have argued that for sports officials, the point of all this concern…about fraudulent, incorrect women, wasn’t accuracy, or logic. It was control."

For “abundance” to improve transportation, supporters must consider the kinds of infrastructure that gets built – not just the quantity. Without addressing externalities (esp from cars), a supply-side spigot of new construction would be a disaster. Me, in Bloomberg CityLab 🧵

It’s book release month!! I’m so excited. Get your copy here: wwnorton.com/books/978132...

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Such a neat research idea & amazing findings: - Nighttime pedestrian deaths fall 5% on nights w/ peak moonlight - In cloud-free conditions, moonlight reduces pedestrian deaths by 17% - Rural areas with low artificial lighting see a 39% drop in deaths under bright moonlight - Links are causal

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

University of California has banned diversity statements in the hiring process because "the requirement to submit a diversity statement may lead applicants to focus on an aspect of their candidacy that is outside their expertise or prior experience." By that logic, what about teaching statements?

As the Trump administration threatens to pull federal funds from universities, including those for medical and scientific research, the University of California has announced a hiring freeze and additional cuts.

In 2018 Musk won a bid for high-speed transit in Chicago. He tried to sell the city on technology that didn’t exist and his proposal was never built. He lied and showed little regard for public services. "We are now seeing the consequences of putting someone like that in a position of power." Blog:

Estimates suggest that the travel speed and emissions reductions benefits of congestion pricing were *greatest* in areas with the *lowest* median household incomes.

Just thinking about what the US looked like before the EPA existed

In a few recent interactions with transportation academics and policy folks, people have mentioned how “people prefer to drive” as a general reason for needing to increase investment in auto infrastructure. With that as motivation, let’s evaluate/audit your potential transit journey away from LAX.

The Trump admin is causing chaos in transport research. Studies have been canceled, datasets have vanished, and experts have been fired. The Nat'l Academies’ Transportation Research Board has caved to Trump’s demands for censorship, triggering upheaval. Its future is in doubt. From me (w/scoops) 🧵

Just in one year, just the clean air act, prevented hundreds of thousands of early deaths. The lowest possible estimate of the benefits found that benefits outweigh the costs by 3 to 1. The most likely estimate is 30 to 1. The high estimate is 90 to 1. Ninety. Nine Zero. www.epa.gov/clean-air-ac...

This is how it’s done.

I like how he looks back at the reality show star to see what to do next

LA's response to USDOT announcing a "review" of the federal contribution of funds. (i.e., they're going to pull the $4 billion of federal funds.) They underestimated transit nerds and the acoustics of Union Station.

This has massive implications for USDOT policies, practices, and thus transportation investments. Turning back the clock to 2003 era of evidence and analysis for BCA. ⤵️

HOT RESEARCH NEWS! Motonormativity ("car brain") is a bias that stops people making rational judgements about driving en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonor... Our new study shows where this bias comes from AND how it makes people think they're odd for supporting changes to the transport system 🧵

"He would always see things in terms of problems that we could fix — if we just cared about them." Let's all commit to caring about the problems we can solve and not let pessimism about the pace of change get in our way

“the overall message from this study is that the transport sector should be considered another commercial determinant of health alongside unhealthy commodity industries such as tobacco and fossil fuel.” Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Interesting research from Aotearoa New Zealand on the influence of the ‘road lobby’ on transport policy discourse. Can’t work in transport policy and not have gone round this cycle a fair few times… www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

“The politicization of the scientific process is a red flag not just for researchers working on equity and inclusion, but for the broader research community and for society at large.”

A favorite and incredibly formative Donald Shoup-ism, I should say, for me when I heard this as an early PhD student crafting a research agenda and surely for countless others. m.youtube.com/watch?v=mnhp...

Most of us can only dream of our work having a fraction of the positive real world impact of Donald Shoup's. But *all* of us can emulate his kindness, generosity, curiosity, and humor. Live your life so people remember how you made them feel as much as how you made them think. Memory, blessing.

A favorite Donald Shoup-ism was his description of the two types of transportation researchers: the dogs & the cats. Dogs chase fast exciting cars; cats (like him) brood on parked cars. With wit & kindness, Don lit a path for policy reform scholars in parking & far beyond. A tremendous loss & legacy

USDOT is proposing to prioritize areas with high marriage & birth rates for funding. Our new analysis @urbaninstitute.bsky.social shows this approach would produce a massive redistribution of transportation funding to rich, car-dependent, high white population areas. www.urban.org/urban-wire/d...

With a bipartisan 6-1 vote, WA's senate housing committee just backed a bill returning to property owners the right to decide how many parking spaces their property needs www.theurbanist.org/2025/02/06/p... bill text: lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/202...

In our new report "Zoned into Risk?" we piloted a technical approach for measuring how a housing market's zoning code impacts its ability to mitigate risk and adapt to changing conditions www.urban.org/research/pub...

This is an existential moment for federal scientists and other public servants as they face pressures to resign. We must do everything we can to safeguard the federal science enterprise. Thoughts and recommendations from me out in @nature.com today: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Short answer: Yes "Using a car for over 50% of out-of-home activities lowers life satisfaction." doi.org/10.1016/j.tb...

Listen, Broligarchy is not some cute synonym for oligarchy. It's genuinely different & WAY more dangerous. I'm a sociologist who's been studying the ultra-rich globally for 17 yrs, entering their world as an offshore wealth mgr. Published 2 books abt them. 🧵Broligarchs are distinct in 3 ways:

The number of people surprised by the long list of words NSF is targeting makes me think many of you all have not seen this: www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

Have you been a victim of cancel culture?? DM/email me if you’ve had a transportation research project canceled in the past week. Affected work seems mostly to be XCRP but we’re interested in all funders. Goal is to quantify the collective impact on the field and chronicle the undone science.

@bethosborne.bsky.social in @usa.streetsblog.org: "And [if you're asking], 'Can they really do this?' They are. So that's been asked and answered. [If you're asking], 'Is it appropriate? Is it legal?' Well, we're not in that world anymore."