Low-income households in the U.S. suffer from disproportionate exposure to air pollution from transportation sources, such as trucks, trains, and planes. Low-income households also use transit more frequently than affluent households do; however, they still rely heavily on vehicles to fill their mobility needs. Due in part to the high cost of housing near job and transit centers, many low- and moderate-income individuals are stuck with long commutes in vehicles that are older, less efficient, and costlier to maintain than the average privately owned vehicle. This is especially true in high-housing-cost states like California.

California is also at the forefront of progressive environmental initiatives, including many innovative transportation-related environmental justice programs. The following research from the Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI) has informed the design and implementation of transportation equity programs in California.

Clean Transportation Programs and Policies


Resilient and Innovative Mobility Initiative (current project)

Researcher: Dan Coffee

With funding from the state legislature for UCs, the UCLA Institute for Transportation & LCI are researching various questions relating to transportation decarbonization in California. LCI’s current focus is analyzing the economic and labor impacts of hydrogen infrastructure buildout to support clean transportation. Other subjects to cover include zero-emissions vehicles, land use, infrastructure, hydrogen fuel, vehicle policy, and environmental justice implications.

Accelerating Transportation Equity: Innovative Partnership Models for Achieve Equity Micromobility Access in Mid-size Cities (2023 report)

Researchers: Doug Arseneault and Gregory Pierce

This report highlights equity-oriented micromobility programs that provide access to shared bicycles and scooters in five US cities. Drawing from interviews, the report offers pioneering models and actionable steps for government agencies, micromobility providers, and community-based organizations to expand access and affordability among low-income and black, indigenous, and people of color travelers and improve infrastructure in their communities.

Beyond Incentives: Lessons from a Community Outreach Campaign Supporting Electric Vehicle Purchase Uptake (2023 report)

Researchers: Rachel Connolly, Gregory Pierce, and Bo Liu

This report documents lessons on how to improve equitable access to clean vehicles for underserved households.

Carbon Neutrality Study 1: Driving California’s Transportation Emissions to Zero (2021 report)

UCLA researchers: Daniel Coffee, JR DeShazo, Joshua Segui, Aditya Voleti, Allison Yang

Led by the Institute of Transportation Studies, this study focuses on strategies to transition California’s transportation system to a carbon-neutral basis by 2045. The researchers identify scenarios, assumptions, and related strategies, tools, options, tradeoffs, and benefits for areas where action can be taken now, as well as where additional actions are needed in the future.

Workforce Impacts of Achieving Carbon-Neutral Transportation in California (2022 report)

Researchers: Dan Coffee, Aditya Voleti, Joshua Segui, Allison Yang, J.R. DeShazo, and Weilong (David) Kong

This technical report reviews the underlying analysis, data, and economic input/output modeling that supported our conclusions in the 2021 report Driving California’s Transportation Emissions to Zero. The researchers find that transportation decarbonization and the widespread adoption of zero-emission vehicles will spur the creation of new multi-billion dollar industries, result in tens of billions of dollars in annual consumer savings, and create hundreds of thousands of full time-equivalent jobs, while also driving significant contractions in some industries focused on servicing fossil fuel-burning vehicles.

Guardrails on Priced Lanes: Protecting Equity While Promoting Efficiency (2022 UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies report)

Authors: J.R. DeShazo and James Di Filippo

Transportation experts herald congestion pricing as the gold standard policy for reducing costly traffic congestion. By charging drivers who use roads during the busiest times, such policies can reduce traffic in ways others cannot. But is congestion pricing equitable?

This Institute of Transportation Studies report outlines how California could use toll revenue creatively to minimize the financial burden of congestion pricing on low-income residents. The most promising option, the authors assert, is to send the toll revenue back to low-income households as a direct rebate, offsetting the costs of tolls for those who have to drive while still incentivizing people to choose other travel modes if they can.

Driving California’s Transportation Emissions to Zero (2021 report)

Research team: Austin L. Brown, Daniel Sperling, Kelly L. Fleming, Timothy Lipman, Lew Fulton, Jean Daniel Saphores, Gil Tal, Colin Murphy, Susan Shaheen, Bernadette Austin, Juan Carlos Garcia Sanchez, Elliot Martin, Marshall Miller, Michael Hyland, Susan Handy, Mark A. Delucchi, Daniel Coffee, J.R. DeShazo, Carolyn Abrams, Debapriya Chakraborty, Sina Dabag, Adam Davis, Kate Forest, Alan Jenn, Seth Karten, Blake Lane, Michael Mackinnon, Elliot Martin, Monica Ramirez-Ibarra, Stephen Ritchie, Sara Schremmer, Joshua Segui, Susan Shaheen, Andre Tok, Aditya Voleti, Julie Witcover, Allison Yang

California has an ambitious goal: achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. How to comprehensively reduce emissions from the state’s largest source of carbon emissions — the transportation sector — has always been a vexing question. To address this, the California Environmental Protection Agency partnered with the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies on a landmark study. LCI was part of the team from UCLA, along with UC Davis, UC Berkeley and UC Irvine, that identified strategies to achieve carbon neutrality in the transportation sector by 2045. The study outlines policy options to significantly reduce transportation-related fossil fuel demand and emissions. Together, these policy options could lead to a zero-carbon transportation system by 2045, while also improving equity, health and the economy.

An Agenda for Equity-Centered Clean Transportation (2021 report)

Authors: J.R. DeShazo and James Di Filippo

This report presents a policy agenda to place equity at the center of California’s transportation decarbonization efforts — an essential element of achieving the state’s climate goals. Highlighting challenges and opportunities amid California’s push to cut carbon emissions and local air pollution, the study underscores the fact that low-income communities hit hardest by pollution have been largely left behind in the transition to cleaner transportation. The report provides recommendations to bring an equity focus to clean transportation policy, focused primarily on reforming zero-emission vehicle adoption policies, improving transportation access, and leveraging the zero-emission transition in public and private vehicle fleets.

Adapting Outreach Methods to Ensure Household Transportation Benefits during COVID-19 (2020)

Researchers: Gregory Pierce and Rachel Connolly

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, it is vital that public agencies and nonprofits adapt to serve their communities. This case study focuses on an innovative example in rapid but careful response to community needs: the Tune In & Tune Up vehicle smog repair program serving low-income residents of the San Joaquin Valley. San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District and program partner Valley Clean Air Now (Valley CAN) adapted quickly to meet community needs for cleaner running vehicles during the pandemic.

Zero-Emission Drayage Trucks: Opportunities and Challenges for the San Pedro Bay Ports (2019 report)

Researchers: James Di Filippo, Colleen Callahan, and Naseem Golestani

Heavy-duty diesel truck traffic is the main source of toxic diesel particulate matter pollution and a major contributor to smog precursor and greenhouse gas emissions in California. Zero-emission alternatives to diesels, particularly battery electric trucks, are becoming commercially available.

This report examines both the need for and current state of zero-emission trucks and the barriers and opportunities involved in moving toward zero-emission drayage trucking for the adjacent Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Referred to as a the San Pedro Ports, they are the first and second largest ports by container volume in the U.S. The report then proposes a set of short-and-medium-term policies and strategies that address main barriers and opportunities, with a focus on the San Pedro Bay Ports.  The mayors of Long Beach and Los Angeles signed a joint executive directive confirming commitment to transition to a zero-emission freight transportation system. Their stated goal is: “zero emissions for drayage trucks serving the ports by 2035.” The authors describe why an accelerated transition in the 2020s could help achieve this goal while providing other benefits.

The report both incorporates findings from an earlier LCI supported study, called Charging Infrastructure Strategies: Maximizing the Deployment of Electric Drayage Trucks in Southern California, and serve as a foundation for future analyses that further support the transition to cleaner drayage trucking.

A second project is exploring strategies to incentivize zero-emission heavy-duty truck adoption in the Inland Empire of Southern California. This work is supported by a Climate Change Research partnership grant from the Strategic Growth Council.

Designing Light-Duty Vehicle Incentives for Low- and Moderate-Income Households (2019 and 2021 report and policy brief)

Authors: Gregory Pierce, Britta McOmber, and J.R. DeShazo

California will require a transformation of its light-duty vehicle fleet in order to meet statewide air quality and climate change goals. As a percentage of household earnings, lower-income populations face disproportionate costs to maintain and operate a vehicle. Optimally priced incentives and financing options can therefore promote household economic well-being while generating broader environmental benefits. To do so, financial incentives should be designed to accelerate the retirement and replacement of older, high-polluting vehicles and increase the adoption of clean vehicles. Yet several challenges persist in enabling low- and moderate-income households to adopt near-zero and zero-emission vehicles in California.

This report, based on an LCI survey of 1,604 low- and moderate-income households, assesses current policies and informs future strategies intended to improve clean vehicle access and use by low- and moderate-income households in California. The results help identify effective policy approaches to improve access to, and adoption of, clean vehicles.

Evaluating a Smog Repair Program for Low-Income Californians (2018 report)

Authors: Gregory Pierce and Rachel Connolly

LCI researchers analyzed data from the San Joaquin Valley’s smog test and vehicle repair program known as Tune In & Tune Up. We found that the program is a model that other regions could use to efficiently reduce emissions from cars and other light-duty vehicles while addressing the mobility needs of low-income households. It is one of the first transportation programs in the nation premised on jointly achieving efficiency, equity, and environmental objectives, and is now informing a grassroots outreach pilot program, led by the Liberty Hill Foundation, bringing clean vehicle, clean energy, and financial assistance programs to low-income households in Los Angeles County.

Assessing the Design and Implementation of a Clean Vehicle Program for Low-Income Households (2017 report)

Authors: Gregory Pierce and J.R. DeShazo

The Enhanced Fleet Modernization Program (EFMP) Plus-Up pilot program is helping hundreds of low-income drivers get out of old, inefficient vehicles and into cleaner, more efficient cars. This LCI report describes how the EFMP Plus-Up pilot was implemented in the two air districts chosen for the pilot phase, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District and South Coast Air Quality Management District, during the first year of program operation. The research is informing the state’s expansion of the program (now renamed Clean Cars 4 All) to other parts of California.

A previous study and article from LCI informed the design of the EFMP Plus-Up pilot. That research found that policymakers could facilitate more emission reductions by strategically linking vehicle purchase incentives with vehicle retirement incentives, which consequently the California Air Resources Board designed EFMP Plus-Up to do in support of low- to moderate-income households.

Increasing Clean Vehicle Rebates for Low- and Moderate-Income Drivers (2016 paper)

Authors: Tamara Sheldon, J.R. DeShazo, and Richard Carson

More Californians can now afford clean vehicles, in part thanks to research involving the LCI. The researchers assessed the performance of alternative rebate designs for plug-in electric vehicles and compared these alternatives in terms of cost-effectiveness and equity. They found that providing progressive rebate levels based on consumer income levels would provide benefits within those performance criteria. These findings helped inform the adoption of California’s progressive rebate system in which low- and moderate-income drivers receive an additional $3,000 to $6,500 in financial incentives to purchase a clean vehicle. Additionally, income rules for most rebates limit eligibility to households with less than $500,000 in annual income.

See the LCI’s Transportation Program page, including our Clean Mobility for Low-income Households initiative, for other examples of how LCI scholars are influencing transportation policy and programs to benefit low-income households and communities.

Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Planning

An Electric Vehicle Charging Station Siting Strategy for the South Coast: Expanding Opportunities in Multi-unit Dwellings and Workplaces (2021 Report)

Researchers: J.R. DeShazo, James DiFilippo, Mark Hansen, Jason Karpman and Gregory Pierce

When consumers are choosing whether to buy an electric vehicle, the availability of charging infrastructure in homes and workplaces is often a deciding factor. This report identifies residential and workplace areas in Southern California where investing in charging infrastructure can spur electric vehicle adoption, ultimately helping to reduce carbon emissions and local air pollution. The uses data from the Southern California Plug-in Electric Vehicle Atlas, an online tool that enables users to explore local factors such as unmet demand for charging stations at multifamily dwellings, locations of employment centers, existing charging stations, and more. Cities and others can use the tool and the report to identify where charging investments would make the most difference.

Speeding Up Electric Vehicle Adoption Among Apartment and Condo Dwellers (2021 report)

Researchers: James DiFilippo and J.R. DeShazo

We evaluated a multi-unit dwelling-focused fast charging pilot program developed by EVgo, America’s largest public network of electric vehicle fast chargers. The study found that apartment and condo dwellers plug in their cars at fast chargers more frequently and closer to home than their non-multi-unit dwelling resident counterparts. This suggests that fast charging stations are an important component for encouraging electric vehicle adoption among condo and apartment residents, who are often low- and moderate-income.

Overcoming Barriers to Electric Vehicle Charging in Multi-unit Dwellings: Westside Cities Case Study and South Bay Case Study (2017 and 2016 reports)

Authors of 2017 report: Jason Karpman, Norman Wong, and J.R. DeShazo
Authors of 2016 report: Alex Turek and J.R. DeShazo

These two reports explore barriers and opportunities to plug-in electric vehicle adoption for residents of apartments and other multi-unit dwellings, using the South Bay and the Westside Cities subregions of Los Angeles County as case studies. The lessons learned are relevant to other areas as well. The studies were supported by the Southern California Association of Governments and the California Energy Commission.

See the LCI’s EV Infrastructure Planning page for other examples of how LCI scholars are informing a strategic expansion of EV infrastructure.