The planning field is a dynamic one, and planners who are knowledgeable about industry trends or who can explain how best to do something for the benefit of a client or larger team such as implementing new service planning guidelines have the ability to create additional positive impacts through their work.  I enjoy learning new things, reading about new concepts, and explaining to colleagues or laypeople why we should do something a different way in order to achieve the optimal result or why we should rethink how we approach an aspect of our field to take advantage of new ideas.  For example, I began the research phase of my undergraduate honors thesis thinking that HOT lanes are Lexus Lanes that only benefit the most well to do among us.  By the time I completed my thesis, I realized that short of sufficient funding from U.S. governmental agencies, we may not have a better option than public-private partnerships to improve our infrastructure, and that HOT lanes and other road pricing schemes can be implemented in ways that are just and equitable to society and benefit the public interests at large.

I invite you to learn from me, my writing, and my research contributions to the following published papers:

• Road Pricing:  Is it along America’s Road to the Future?  (2009)
  • Undergraduate honors thesis, Cornell University
  • In recent years, many cities around the world, including several in the United States, have implemented road pricing schemes as a way to reduce congestion, raise revenue for transportation projects, or a combination of these goals. Road pricing schemes take a variety of forms. The form most commonly found in the United States is
    high occupancy toll lanes. The federal government is starting to promote road pricing as sound and reliable transportation policy, but road pricing proposals often elicit the
    concern of many stakeholders, and case studies that would allow decision makers to draw upon previous experiences are limited. This paper begins by outlining the history of road pricing, including Columbia University economics professor William Vickrey’s initial proposals on the concept. It then discusses both the arguments in favor of and against road pricing and established best practices with regards to issues such as financing, revenue uses, and equity concerns to provide recommendations on what should be done to further improve road pricing policy and adequately address the concerns that frequently come up when road pricing is proposed. The paper’s ultimate finding is that the established best practices are proving to be sound policy and equity concerns are not as large an issue as many initially fear when a project is proposed. However, additional pilot programs, including a cordon, need to be run before road pricing becomes accepted transportation policy in the United States.
• TCRP Synthesis 140: Comprehensive Bus Network Redesigns (2019)
  • TCRP Synthesis 140: Comprehensive Bus Network Redesigns provides an overview of the current state of practice regarding comprehensive bus network redesign. The study examines practices among agencies of different sizes, geographic locations, and modes.
    The report captures the many components that are needed to successfully plan and implement a redesign and carefully considers the goals and objectives that agencies set forth when they began that process, helping them determine whether a redesign even made sense for the agency at that point in time.
    Comprehensive bus network redesigns, in which transit agencies fundamentally alter the structure and organization of their bus networks, are not completely novel in transit. However, redesigns have become seemingly more common in recent years. The motivations for embarking on network redesigns vary across transit agencies, but, given the prevalence of redesigns in recent history and with more redesigns likely to come, the transit industry will benefit from improved documentation of network redesign rationales, outcomes, best practices, and challenges.