UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies

One of the leading transportation policy research centers in the United States, the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies aims to support and advance cutting-edge research, the highest-quality education, and meaningful and influential civic engagement on the many pressing transportation issues facing our cities, state, nation, and world today. UCLA ITS is a non-endowed research center housed in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and ITS faculty, staff, and students regularly collaborate with and receive support from the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. ITS is a proud partner in the Pacific Southwest Region 9 University Transportation Center, a federally funded research network with seven other universities. The transportation planning program at UCLA has been ranked second in the nation by Planetizen, due in no small part to ITS support of transportation faculty and students. Since its inception in 1992, ITS has supported hundreds of UCLA Luskin students with more than $2 million in scholarship funds. ITS also has enhanced the curriculum by regularly funding special topics courses in transportation studies. This support has helped the Departments of Public Policy and Urban Planning attract many of the best and brightest transportation students to UCLA. Not surprisingly, transportation policy and planning faculty and students have garnered an inordinate number of prestigious grants and awards. ITS also actively links transportation research with policy and planning practice. Each fall since 1991, ITS researchers co-host the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium, bringing together leading transportation, land use, and environmental scholars with top policy and planning practitioners from around the globe for a retreat in the San Bernardino Mountains. In addition, ITS regularly hosts conferences and events in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C., along with dozens of public lectures on a wide variety of topics.