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Amy Lee

@amyelee.com
5.8K followers 455 following 138 posts

Postdoc at the University of California, Davis. Studying policy and politics of transportation, land use, and travel behavior. She/her. amyelee.com 🏳️‍🌈

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Reposted by Amy Lee
Sara C. Bronin @sarabronin.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
MAJOR PAPER DROP #2: Anyone claiming AI can read zoning codes is wrong. From academics offering chimerical metrics to private zoning-data companies producing AI slop, too many believe in AI shortcuts: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... This belief is only helping us misunderstand the law faster.
papers.ssrn.com
KEEPING AI IN ITS ZONE
With zoning-reform fever sweeping local governments, state legislatures, and even Congress, there is an urgent push to understand exactly how zoning works. Unfo
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 26/08/2026
They are lowering US flags to half-mast for a week, but if the government really wants to pay tribute to Dolly, they should fund education, the arts, and medical research instead of trying to eradicate them.
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Reo Eveleth @reveleth.com · 20/08/2026
If you're confused by the conversations around sex testing and trans athletes and all that, I made a podcast that traces the history of this debate from the very beginning. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts: www.tested-podcast.com/listen/
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 28/07/2026
Super interesting polling results: "One in three U.S. adults (34%) name road-related accidents as their most top-of-mind daily safety risk, more than twice the global average of 14%." Much higher than the one in five (19%) who point to crime and violence. news.gallup.com/poll/712673/...
Chart comparing what US adults feel most threatened by, compared to the global average. US adults see road-related accidents as the highest risk to their safety in their daily life - with 34% mentioning it - compared to 14% globally.
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Prof. Ian Walker @ianwalker.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
We limit the speed of ebikes "for public safety", yet this study shows we'd need to limit SUVs to 5.7 km/h for them to pose the same risk to other people #motonormativity findingspress.org/article/1587...
findingspress.org
Motonormativity and Speed Limits | Published in Findings
By Jeremy de Sousa, Alessia Vinet & 3 more. Cars pose a far greater threat to other road users than e-micromobility, raising a basic question for traffic safety: which modes should actually be limited...
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
At the end of the term I asked my college creative wriing students to submit anonymous thoughts on AI. No real surprises: Mood ranges from resignation to despair, capitulation from embittered erosion of standards to total, feelings of betrayal from deep to furious. 1/
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Xavier Harmony @transitharmony.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
🚨 New paper! 🚨 Does talking about transportation help local election candidates win? 🗳️ Analysing candidates for local office across the United States, I found that transportation issues could be used as a strategic electoral advantage in local elections. Read the article: doi.org/10.1177/1078...
Title and abstract for a new academic journal article called "Are Transportation Issues Important in Local Elections?" just published in Urban Affairs Review.
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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 04/06/2026
Seattle's light rail & streetcar lines carried 4.8 million riders in April—a 44% increase above March, after Link Line 2 was extended to connect Seattle & Bellevue across Lake Washington. Seattle's light rail & streetcar lines are now the most-ridden in the nation, above LA, Boston, or San Diego.
Ridership trends on Seattle's light rail and streetcar services, from 2002 to April 2026.
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Rachel Cole @rmartincole.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Cover of  “Slicing the Cake: The case for a Los Angeles–San Diego bullet train service. An Assessment by Jonathan Richmond,' featuring an illustration of a sliced cake with city infrastructure on top, including  highways and a bullet train.
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Madeline Brozen @mbrozen.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
I’ve taken the wheel from @shanedphillips.bsky.social on the Housing Voice podcast for the next four regular episodes to talk transportation! First up - how has cities responded to the state change in parking requirements around transit stops?
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 24/04/2026
Super excited to hear about parking policy change in the PNW from Catie Gould. Tune in on May 7.
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Sightline Institute @sightline.org · 20/04/2026
What happens when states take the lead on parking reform? Join @uclaits.bsky.social on May 7, with @citizen-cate.bsky.social on passing WA's SB 5184 and @amyelee.com on how CA's AB 2097 is playing out on the ground. Sign up at the link below!
its.ucla.edu
State Preemption of Parking Minimums: Insights from Washington and California - UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies
What happens when states take the lead on parking reform? This event explores the growing movement to preempt minimum parking requirements at the state level, with attention to how policy design varie...
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Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
The EPA is no longer going to consider how many potential lives a pollution regulation would save -- just the costs to industry. This is directly counter to EPA's mission. And it will kill Americans. Great (depressing) scoop from @maxinejoselow.bsky.social. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...
nytimes.com
E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution
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Timmons Roberts @timmonsroberts.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Why is advancing ambitious climate legislation hard even in “deep blue” states? Here’s a systematic study of 6 years of lobbying data and 8 years of testimony in a state that sees itself as a climate leader, but is struggling with implementation of its bold targets. Guess who are obstructing?
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Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD @mbonsma.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
If you could snap your fingers and remove 10% of the vehicles causing traffic and clogging up the streets, would you do it? That power exists, and it's called congestion pricing.
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Prof. Ian Walker @ianwalker.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Yet another evidence review argues very strongly that simply providing alternatives to driving doesn't reduce driving This isn't surprising, if only thanks to habit. If I unthinkingly jump in my car for every trip (as many do), new buses won't change that www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Reducing traffic with “carrots”: A review of the evidence
Reducing traffic volumes is one way to reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector. Since increasing driving costs is often met with public resi…
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 05/11/2025
Today on Volts: sustainable transportation policy is under comprehensive attack by the federal government, but states can soften the blow. Specifically, governors have a little-understood authority to transfer existing federal funds to EV charging, bike lanes, & transit. But time is running out!
volts.wtf
Hey governors: you can salvage sustainable transportation, but you need to do it quick!
Liya Rechtman lays out the playbook for governors to salvage clean transportation using existing federal funds before it's too late.
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 05/11/2025
tired: leaders throw folks under the bus wired: leaders invite folks on the bus in a dedicated lane
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Jack Cousteau ⚓️ @angrywaterman.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Seattle No Kings from the monorail
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Giulio Mattioli @giuliomattioli.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
This book finally got published today - free for download here cssn.org/news-researc... A monumental effort documenting climate obstruction across sectors, countries & governance levels, by 110 @cssn.org scholars I was chuffed to contribute to one of the chapters (thread)
cssn.org
Global Assessment - Brown Climate Social Science Network
Climate advocacy has not failed, climate policy has been sabotaged, explains a new open access book, Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment.
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Peter Norton @norton.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Happy centennial! It’s worth noting that originally this body, the first national traffic engineering institute, was funded 100% by one automobile manufacturer: Studebaker. It was named the Erskine Bureau after the company’s president. In 1935 the Automobile Manufacturers Association took it over.
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UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies @uclaits.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
The Jan 2025 LA fires showed how urban wildfires endanger transit riders and ppl w/o cars. 📊 Among transit riders surveyed: - 28% relied on rides from others - 21% used transit to evacuate - Black respondents were most likely to evacuate via transit (42%) www.its.ucla.edu/publication/...
Evacuation modes by subgroups: This bar chart figure shows how various population groups traveled to safety during the wildfire evacuation. While getting rides from others was most frequent among evacuees, public transit or walking/biking were more commonly used by transportation-disadvantaged groups, including low-income, Black, and carless residents
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 30/06/2025
Screenshot of a quote from the article: "Global climate modelers have a hard time incorporating policies like street design and bike lanes [into their estimates] because they're implemented by thousands of individual local governments, rather than the nation-state, which is a normally the unit of analysis," Millard-Ball added. "So as a result, a lot of the global climate policy discourse focuses more on technology in the transportation sector, like electrification and fuel efficiency. And certainly that's really important — but it doesn't capture the public transit, [or] the walking and biking policies."
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Madeline Brozen @mbrozen.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
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
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Marcel Moran @marcelmoran.com · 20/06/2025
Same street, two years apart. Rue Charles Moureu.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
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.
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ETSC - European Transport Safety Council @etsc.eu · 03/06/2025
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...
etsc.eu
20mph limits in London linked to sharp fall in road injuries and deaths, new report finds
A new study published by Transport for London (TfL) has shown that the introduction of 20mph speed limits and zones on local authority-managed roads in London between 1989 and 2013 led to significant…
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 04/06/2025
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.
a photo from an airplane with a corridor of jacaranda street trees blooming purple
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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
"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."
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Phil Rocco @philiprocco.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
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/...
An Engine, Not a Vessel: Place, Politics, and Health in the United States
Philip Roccohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5971-7039
Abstract
Social scientists often treat places as containers for social and economic phenomena that shape health outcomes. Yet this analytic practice conceals more than it reveals. Local governments in the United States should be understood as engines of both health promotion and stratification. As the contributions to this symposium suggest, governments not only occupy a formal place in the U.S. public health system, their decisions on everything from housing to transportation infrastructure can also have profound impacts on health outcomes. Local political economies likewise renegotiate the parameters of acceptable health interventions, public understandings of health disparities, and the status of population health as a public good. By illustrating these linkages, the authors here suggest important future lines of research on both the promise and limits of local health governance, as well as how the allocation of local political power shapes health disparities.
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UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies @uclaits.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
🚨 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...
its.ucla.edu
New job opportunity: Parking Center Staff Director - UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies
Join the UCLA ITS team. We're looking for a founding staff director to lead a newly established parking center.
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Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
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...
stanforddaily.com
What DEI threatens isn’t merit. It’s monopoly.
Political science professor Hakeem Jefferson argues for DEI's importance to de-monopolizing universities.
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Nolan Hicks @ndhapple.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Yes, the famously private freeway system and the famously private airport systems
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 16/04/2025
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.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 14/04/2025
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.
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 15/04/2025
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."
cbc.ca
Tested | CBC Podcasts | CBC Listen
Who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have b...
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
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 🧵
bloomberg.com
What Would ‘Transportation Abundance’ Look Like?
Fans of the abundance movement say that adding supply solves big problems in housing and health care. But when it comes to getting around, things get complicated.
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Deborah Archer @deborahnarcher.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
It’s book release month!! I’m so excited. Get your copy here: wwnorton.com/books/978132...
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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
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.
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 26/03/2025
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
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Gerry Canavan @gerrycanavan.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 20/03/2025
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?
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Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 19/03/2025
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.
latimes.com
University of California orders hiring freeze, cuts in response to Trump threats
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.
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Union of Concerned Scientists @ucs.org · 19/03/2025
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:
blog.ucs.org
Transportation Professionals Saw Elon Musk’s Lies and Disdain for the Public Firsthand.
We can't sit on the sidelines now.
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 17/03/2025
Estimates suggest that the travel speed and emissions reductions benefits of congestion pricing were *greatest* in areas with the *lowest* median household incomes.
6 Distributional Effects
Proposals to implement congestion pricing often face concerns over potential adverse impacts on specific groups, such as lower-income drivers (Ecola and Light, 2009; Taylor, 2010). In this section, we estimate the effects of congestion pricing on regions of different income levels, distance to the CBD, and for specific areas of interest such as New Jersey and the Bronx. Table 1 documents the policy's treatment effects on four outcomes for each geographic breakdown, following the same generalized synthetic control methodology as in previous sections. The first two columns show the effects on segments within the specified region. The latter two show the effects on speeds for trips originating from the region to destinations either inside or outside the CBD.
Median household income. We first compare the effects of the policy on areas with higher or lower income. We divide Census tracts based on where they fall in the within-CBSA distribution of median household income in the 2018-2023 American Community Survey (ACS). Median household incomes in the NYC metro area range from approximately $44,500 for the average tract in the bottom qui tile of the distribution to $182,000 for the average tract in the top quintile.
We find that congestion pricing has had broadly similar effects on areas across the income distri-bution. Our estimates suggest that the positive effects on speeds have been greatest in the bottom quintile of income and decreased monotonically as we move up the income distribution, although the differences are small and not statistically significant. The corresponding effect on emissions follows a similar pattern, with the largest decreases for segments in the lowest income tracts. Trips traveling to the CBD from any income quintile have experienced an 8-9% increase in speeds, with no significant differences in effects across quintiles.
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Brian Kahn @blkahn.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Just thinking about what the US looked like before the EPA existed
A vintage photo from the National Archives shows smog hanging over the New York skylineA vintage photo from the National Archives shows damaged oil drums piled high at an Exxon refinery. A vintage photo from the National Archives shows cars driving down a road as smoke spews from factories in the distance and air pollution hangs over everything.A vintage photo from the National Archives shows smog in Los Angeles taken from a high vantage point.
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Amy Lee @amyelee.com · 12/03/2025
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.
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
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) 🧵
bloomberg.com
The Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation Research
Researchers warn of a “chilling environment” as studies examining road safety and other topics are killed off and layoffs hit federal agencies.
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