Kevin R Liu

Originally from Washington, Kevin’s involvement with transportation and mobility justice began when he started commuting by bike and working for Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles as a DACA advocate. His clients were primarily undocumented immigrants, many of whom struggled with navigating the transportation challenges associated with Los Angeles’ sprawl. Motivated by their stories, Kevin pivoted to working at LA Metro in an attempt to better understand the city’s transit machine and how to improve it.

Currently, Kevin works at Investing in Place, where he focuses on advocacy efforts around better bus service and improvements to planning for capital infrastructure projects in Los Angeles. Kevin is also a second year graduate student in urban planning at UCLA, concentrating in transportation policy and planning. His capstone project focuses on envisioning a bus lane network for Los Angeles in partnership with the Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles (ACT-LA). His project investigates bus lane case studies from around the world in order to better inform ACT-LA’s ongoing campaign for better bus service.

Project Overview

“Life in the Bus Lane” envisions better bus service in Los Angeles by exploring bus lane best practices and potential challenges from various cities that have demonstrated success across three key categories: advocacy, governance, and implementation. The intention of the project is to provide the client, Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles (ACT-LA), a report and findings that will be shared with its membership. ACT-LA intends to utilize the report to support community visioning for better bus service in Los Angeles.

Why is this topic, specifically, important to you?

I honed in on this project because it involved buses in Los Angeles and was proposed by ACT-LA, an organization that I believe is doing important work across the city. I’m interested in bus lanes, specifically, because buses impact some of L.A.’s most dependable and deserving riders.
As someone who is relatively new to the field, I’m learning about how many (but not all) transportation agencies and regional planning organizations focus on enticing “choice” riders out of their cars. But where does that leave low-income communities of color who have already experienced underinvestment in transportation service and infrastructure?
LA Metro’s 2022 Customer Experience Survey reports that an overwhelming majority of LA’s transit riders are low-income people of color, while also naming bus frequency and timeliness as riders’ biggest concerns. I believe that bus lanes present an interesting infrastructure upgrade to service because they often improve reliability and speed, while still catering to varying street conditions, agency governance structures, and community needs.

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will you be working with them?

I’m working with ACT-LA, who is also the primary client for this project. They have provided direction for the research questions as well as the overall purpose of the project and subsequent final report. Part of the methods for this project involve reaching out to a network of transportation agency staff and advocates for interviews about their experience and involvement with bus lane projects in their respective cities. I hope to continue to stay in touch with these representatives while establishing a relationship between them and ACT-LA.

How do you hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

ACT-LA has communicated that this project will assist organization members in developing a vision for better bus service in L.A. Accordingly, the tone and purpose of this project is to provide institutionalized knowledge about bus lanes to our community members. I hope that this project impacts the field in a way that continues to push report writing and study design towards accessibility, while still maintaining the research rigor expected of work within the field. Additionally, I believe that this project drives forward the existing literature and practice of bus lanes, so I hope that agencies continue to seriously consider bus lanes as an impactful infrastructure upgrade.