Untitled

N e w s l e t t e r
No. 1 | Summer 2012 | MURP

Welcome to the first-ever, Summer issue of the MURP Newsletter. This first issue has a quick and dirty review of the previous end-of-year activities and introduces two students internship work. We have also introduced here some of the ways that you can connect with UPSA at UCI and with your fellow MURPs electronically. As a student here at UCI in the MURP program, this last one year has been a whirl-wind. I think to myself, a year ago, I was eagerly anticipating moving to Puerta del Sol and meeting my new classmates. With a nearly a year behind and many friends made, discussions had in classes, and events participated in, it is with a twinge of sadness that I think about and plan the future year with the rest of my classmates of the Class of 2013. As we plan ahead for courses and for the experiences wed like to have, I can sense a feeling among my fellow classmates of wanting to know the incoming Class of 2014. We met a handful of you at the Open House and have been chatting off and on with those others who are around Southern California, but I wonder, what will you be? Where will you come from? How can we work together? What are your experiences? With sadness too we saw off the graduating Class of 2012 at our final classes or rush to hand in final examinations, papers, and/or projects. We dont know when well see each other again, but I can definitely say that when we meet again, it will be a very happy occasion! We cant wait to hear of your experiencesgood and badand your own personal victories at work or in your PhD program. As I look on to the future and also to the future of this newsletter, I hope that this can become a place to share your experiences, introduce new thoughts to your fellow classmates, and more than anything else, for the futures sake, also introduce your personal accomplishmentsyour own victories, not out of a vainglorious sense of pride, but from a place of positive pride, a showcase of your own hard-fought work. - Andrew Reker, UPSA Secretary, APA Student Representative

Events
Did you know UPSA has put on four very successful professional and networking events this year? Through these events, students have had the opportunity to connect with professionals from various sectors of planning and gained valuable insights into the profession. We look forward to seeing you at the exciting events we have planned for next school year!

Past Events: Quarterly Alumni | Student Mixer Resume Workshop Ask an Alum A glimpse of what we have planned for next year: Google Earth Workshops Google SketchUp Workshops APA Accreditation Information Session Quarterly Alumni | Student Mixer Ask an Alum

Internship
Metro
Samantha Mesuro I am currently a first year student pursuing the dual Masters of Urban and Regional Planning and Masters of Civil Engineering degrees focusing on transportation. I have been interning at Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) since December. I am working in the Systems Analysis and Research (SAR) group of their Countywide Planning department. The SAR group does modeling and data analysis that provide background for new transportation projects. My background is in mathematics and I am very interested in transportation and modeling. So this group has been a really good fit for me. Mostly I have been doing data analysis. At first I was working with traffic sensor data analyzing demand and congestion in specific areas of interest. I also worked with bus ridership data in the same area to compare. Lately I have been analyzing the results of on-board surveys that were done on all modes of transit in Metros network. Not only have I been learning from the results of my analysis but also I have learned so much about the techniques and assumptions that go into data analysis and modeling in transportation. Additionally I have learned to use new statistical software. While most of the work I do is in Excel, I have also started to learn R. There has definitely been a learning curve but I have really been enjoying my internship at Metro.

major service change to test for negative high and adverse impacts to Environmental Justice populations and negative disparate impacts to racial minorities as an aggregate. As a representation of real-life meeting academic thought and theory, of environmental justice concerns meeting with real-life public policy and planning concerns, the process in developing a Title VI Service Equity Analysis is a good example of the difficulties as encountered in the professional world. Some of the interesting conflicts that occurred to me in the process of writing portions of the Service Equity Analysis are the difficulties of community engagement in defining what environmental justice is and means for a commuter rail agency which usually provides service to middle to upper income commuters, what defines a high or disparate impacts, and methods of engaging a community that is either not politically active or may be distant from political engagement. All of these concerns have driven me back to concepts that have been discussed in Planning Theory class or Professor Houstons course on Transportation and Environmental Health or furthermore, in the more mundane, data analysis parts of my job, the coursework in Regional Analysis on networks and the input-output analysis that we engaged in during the formative weeks in the course. As Metrolink embarks on other projects, including a study on the I-5 corridor and engaging in questions of mode shifts due to construction and mode stickiness after construction is done, I am looking forward to bringing this exterior experience back into the classroom to discuss issues that occur in real-life planning problems and conflicts.

MetroLink
Andrew Reker Southern California has an extensive commuter rail system which connects all corners of the region running 190+ trains over the day. This is not a statement about the future, but today. And currently, I intern at the agency in charge of it all, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority / MetroLink in the Research + Planning Department. Starting in February 2012, I have been learning the ins and outs of work in a government agency. The most significant projects that Ive worked on is the Federally-mandated Title VI Service Equity Analysis. Service Equity Analysis is required for every

Follow us: Facebook: UC Irvine MURPs Twitter: @UPSAUCI Web: http://upsauci.wordpress.com/