California Air Resources Board

Online Seminar held May 1, 2025: Recording, presentation, and written Q&A available

CARB hosted a seminar for a research study that updates and adds to policy briefs with the latest research on the effects of transportation and land use policies and strategies on vehicle use and greenhouse gas emissions. This information may be of use to metropolitan planning organizations as they create sustainable communities strategies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions to comply with SB 375 and to others as they consider similar issues. The seminar discussed the outcomes of the strategies, their relative ease of implementation, and how quickly they can be expected to take effect when implemented.

A recording and the seminar presentation are available below under Research Seminars. Some of the current research study's new policy briefs are already available in the lists below. More will be added as they are finalized.

Policy Briefs

CARB staff collaborated with researchers at the University of California at Davis and University of Southern California to examine the existing scientific literature on the effects of key transportation- and land use-related policies as strategies to reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of this effort is to help strengthen the technical underpinnings of regional planning processes and identify important data gaps and research needs in support of SB 375.

The culmination of this collaborative effort is presented for each policy in the tables below. For earlier versions, this includes two documents: a policy brief and a more detailed technical background document for practitioners. For updates and new briefs completed in a new research project to be finalized in 2025, there is a single document containing a summary, policy brief, and technical background.

These materials may be used to help inform development of, and potential improvements to, the analytical models and tools used by metropolitan planning organizations and other public agencies for SB 375 implementation.

Research Seminars

For the previous research, Susan Handy, Ph.D., UC Davis, discussed the results of research that support the policy briefs and technical background documents at a CARB research seminar held on October 7, 2014 (more information here).

CARB held a seminar for the 2025 policy brief update on May 1, 2025, with Dillon Fitch-Polse, Ph.D., UC Davis, and the research team. Materials from the seminar are available here:

• May 1, 2025, seminar recording
• May 1, 2025, seminar presentation
• May 1, 2025, seminar written Q&A

Transportation-Related Policies

Land Use-Related Policies