Technology
Scheduling smarter: Combining technology and policy for more pleasant, equitable commuting
As housing costs push workers farther from their jobs, UCSC researchers are developing smart scheduling technology to ease commutes and reduce traffic in Santa Cruz. By combining real-time data, public policy, and community input, the project aims to create a more equitable and sustainable public transportation system.
Living in paradise comes with a cost. For the second consecutive year, Santa Cruz has been named the most expensive county in California by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. As the housing crisis continues to burden the entire Bay Area, many families who work in the region are being forced to move further away from their jobs — trading longer commutes for more affordable housing.
This phenomenon, known as the jobs-housing spatial mismatch, creates a slew of problems, including unmet public transportation demands, increased traffic congestion, and overcrowded living conditions near job sites.
Now, a team of UCSC researchers led by Carlos Martinez, an assistant professor of Latin American and Latino studies, Katia Obraczka, professor of computer science and engineering, and Ricardo Sanfelice, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, are working to improve public transportation use by developing scheduling systems that decrease the average commuter’s wait time and reduce commuter traffic.
We spoke with Martinez and Sanfelice, who are piloting this research with support from the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience, to learn more about how this technology will help city officials create a more equitable and climate-friendly public transportation system.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Your work aims to address the jobs-housing spatial mismatch. Can you share more about this problem?
SANFELICE: This is a very important problem, especially for those of us who work on campus or on the West side of Santa Cruz, for example, because we have a very difficult time getting to work and getting back home. For residents who live on the East side of the county or beyond in the Watsonville area, we see commute times that are sometimes five times longer in each direction. That creates a lot of unnecessary cost and burden for everyone involved – commuters, industry workers, city workers, and more. We’re excited to work with the local government and figure out ways we can minimize costs and improve the overall experience.
MARTINEZ: This issue is particularly impactful for low income communities who have to commute in and out of Santa Cruz County. The idea is that middle and lower income households who can’t afford the Bay Area’s escalating housing prices are moving to more affordable ex-urban locations. They’re trading off more affordable housing for longer and more expensive commutes. This is something that is easier to do for middle income households who might have more flexibility in their schedules. But many low income households, including people who have multiple jobs, often can’t afford the time or the cost of commuting.
How does your project address these commuter issues?
SANFELICE: Our project aims to use technology to find ways for people to commute more efficiently. This could be through exploring different schedules, mode of transportation, or affording more flexible commuting hours. It allows us to re-think our transportation systems and figure out how we can adapt them in real time to meet the needs of the different industries.
Much of these solutions that we are coming up with rely heavily on data. We are collecting and analyzing how people decide where to live, when to commute to work and how they travel to and from their job. We are trying to understand when and how the traffic bottlenecks occur by looking at the trends. This will help us identify the critical sections of our transportation system that could be redesigned. With this information, we are coming up with simulation based schedules that people could actually use to minimize these issues.
MARTINEZ: We are trying to create scheduling systems that can work in collaboration with various public transportation systems and improve people’s commute times across different regions. These smart scheduler technologies would be accessible to these communities and help reduce commute times and congestion.
What is a smart scheduler, and how does it work?
SANFELICE: Smart schedules are algorithms that are designed with mathematical tools to give a recommended commute or schedule for people to follow.
You likely use a mobile app that gives you a route to go from your location to a different location. These smart schedulers will create your transit schedule depending on the specific parameters you’re interested in. For example, it will tailor a recommendation for if you want to spend less time driving, spend more time at work, or reduce your car use and emissions.
MARTINEZ: It could be as simple as an app on someone’s phone, which would not only allow people to figure out commutes across systems, but could also provide feedback to transportation services, so counties can better coordinate their schedules.
How does this smart scheduler differ from something like Waze, that’s already being used?
SANFELICE: Current mobile apps are likely to give you the best route for you, as an individual commuter. That schedule is rather selfish or greedy, as it might not consider other people’s preferences. The smart schedule we envision, on the other hand, will take other users’ routes into consideration to minimize overlap. This is useful when you have a large number of users to route in a way that can optimize everybody’s preferences.
How are you engaging the community in this work? Both the general public and local government.
MARTINEZ: My training is in public health and medical anthropology, so although this particular kind of project is new to me, I have experience doing community-engaged research. So, my main focus in this work is trying to shape the kinds of questions we’re asking people so we can understand how decisions are made and what kinds of things we need to advocate for. It’s an interesting intersection of using technology and policy to come up with equitable solutions.
Policy makers have a strong interest in this work. We’ve been in contact with city and county leaders to gain access to the data they already have in relation to commuting, and also to consult with them around potential solutions and how to best integrate the scheduler technology.
We’ve also been trying to show how transportation equity is related to climate and planning for the long term. In California, transportation systems have always been thought about as an environmental issue in terms of increasing public transit in order to decrease private car use, but how we do that and how we make that accessible is not always thought about as a climate issue. That’s a perspective that we’re bringing to the conversation.
What do you think is important for people to know about this work?
MARTINEZ: I think it’s important for people to understand how transportation and equity is tied up with climate in all these different ways. I think there are technological and policy solutions that need to be brought together in order to figure out solutions for the long term.
The jobs-housing spatial mismatch is a problem that is obviously not going away, and we really need to figure out a way through this that is going to be manageable by cities and counties. I think the solutions are going to have to come from collaborations between researchers and policy makers.
SANFELICE: Traffic congestion and inefficient public transportation is definitely a very, very important problem to solve. This is a massive amount of money that is being spent on things that could be saved. For instance, if a commute time is 90 minutes at rush hour, instead of 30 minutes, that’s an hour of work time or leisure time wasted. I’m not even including the use of gas, road wear and tear, and frustration that could probably create additional issues down the road for people involved in this kind of daily grind.
Moreover, it’s not just a problem in Santa Cruz. These days, no matter which city you go to, you’ll find these bottlenecks. How can we remove these bottlenecks? How can we force the future redesign and expansion of urban cities? That is very important for urban planners, and I believe that they will be very willing to listen about how to do it efficiently and equitably.