ericmorris3@gmail.com
Bio
Eric Morris is a transportation scholar at UCLA. He hails from Deerfield, IL, a suburb of Chicago. He attended Deerfield High School. As a child and teenager he worked as a professional actor, appearing in regional musical theater productions of Oliver!, Camelot, and Annie Get Your Gun.
Eric attended Harvard, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in History and Literature. He specialized in 17th century English history and wrote his senior thesis on the foundation of the Bank of England. While in college he was a writer for Let’s Go: Europe with a beat in still-communist Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. He also appeared in two Hasty Pudding Theatricals productions and wrote for the Harvard Crimson. His most notable accomplishment during this period was driving Michael Jordan’s cars.
After college Eric relocated to Los Angeles where he wrote and produced for television. His writing credits include episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, JAG, Xena: Warrior Princess, The Pretender and Outer Limits. He created the comedy/action series Jack of All Trades, which starred Bruce Campbell as a spy fighting the Napoleonic Empire.
Eric holds an M.A. in urban planning from UCLA. He is currently a doctoral student in UCLA’s department of urban planning and a researcher at UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies. He studies under the direction of Professor Brian D. Taylor.
Eric's interests include transportation equity; transportation and disadvantaged populations; transportation history; and transportation finance, economics, and management. He has also studied environmental economics with Matthew E. Kahn, economic geography with Michael Storper and Allen J. Scott, parking policy with Donald Shoup, and the transportation/land use nexus with Randall Crane.
Eric is co-authoring a book on the history and financing of the freeway system with Professor Taylor and Professor Jeffrey R. Brown of Florida State University; it will be published by the University of Chicago Press. Eric's dissertation research centers on transportation, land use, the urban environment and overall well-being, particularly that of low-income families.
Eric is a regular contributor to the New York Times’ “Freakonomics” blog. He has also authored or co-authored several papers in academic transportation journals.
When not using statistical methods to analyze traveling, Eric enjoys using statistical methods to analyze traveling – as in the "traveling" violation on the basketball court. Eric writes about pro basketball on a weekly basis for the NBA's website, nba.com. His focus is on the fantasy game, of which he is a rabid player. Eric also curates a decent-sized Grateful Dead bootleg collection.
Eric is single and lives in Sherman Oaks, California.
ACADEMIC CV
COMPLETE TELEVISION WRITING CREDITS
JACK OF ALL TRADES
LINKS TO SELECTED BROADCASTS &
PUBLICATIONS