Project Summary
Although California’s statewide vision for creating a resilient, universally accessible transportation system requires aligning municipal plans with state goals, local jurisdictions often face challenges in embracing state goals when updating their plans. To better support more systematic integration of state and local transportation plans, this project will develop a translational self-assessment tool by extending a preceding UC-ITS-sponsored project: UC-ITS 2026-08. The translational project will proceed in three phases. Phase 1 will expand the existing plan repository by integrating 10–20 diverse California cities, ranging from logistics-heavy growing cities to service-sector-based mature localities, and measure the extent to which local plan contents are aligned with state goals using semantic similarity analysis methods. Phase 2 will identify exemplary policies/strategies based not only on semantic similarity scores but also on human validation. Phase 3 will develop a convenient diagnostic tool that allows users to input draft plan language and leverage encoding algorithms to generate alignment scores and identify relevant exemplary policies/strategies drawn from the expanded plan repository. This tool will contribute to expanding municipalities' technical capacity for plan making/updating, while fostering peer learning without imposing a one-size-fits-all approach.