Things I’ve created

Derailed is a deep dive into the planning process, political campaign, and other circumstances that all contributed to Nashville’s high-profile transit referendum failure in May 2018. I designed and led this project with and as a consultant to TransitCenter while based in Nashville, building a local stakeholder network, planning and leading interviews, writing and editing the report, and supporting press outreach and promotion.

Inclusive Transit is the first report to summarize and highlight opportunities for transit agencies to improve racial equity and advance social justice. I designed and led this project through the editorial phase—from concept development through research,  writing and editing—then handed it off to my TransitCenter colleagues for layout and release. 

I designed TransitCenter’s Ridership Initiative to create and shape the public conversation about how transit industry leaders could best respond to widespread, pre-COVID declines in transit ridership. This project paired original analysis (including a since-updated interactive ridership analysis tool) with original case study content sourced directly from the practitioners who know their work best (NB: linked posts from Nov 2017 – June 2018). 

Who knew that ice cream contains solid, liquid, and gaseous components, and is technically considered a ‘foam’? Few values are more universally shared than a love of frozen desserts, and yet ice cream remains poorly understood by the general public. Churning Man is my personal ice cream blog, and features a variety of musings, recipes, scientific explorations, reviews, and expert interviews. 

My masters thesis focused on understanding how various stakeholder groups influence the greenhouse gas emissions of urban development in China, and how different development ‘pathways’ have influenced the environmental impacts of development from province to province. I conducted in-person interviews with relevant stakeholders and experts in Beijing, and paired that qualitative exploration with a machine learning–based analysis of urban development over time for each of China’s 30 provinces. I was awarded the Technology and Policy Program‘s Best Thesis award for this work in 2014. 

The Nashville Community Transportation Platform provided a community-sourced policy and implementation agenda for candidates for citywide office in the March 2019 Metro Nashville election cycle. I helped local Nashville non-profits convene, develop, and promote the platform—which was ultimately endorsed by the elected Mayor and fully half of the newly-elected City Council

The Data Transit Riders Want provides a roadmap for transit agencies who recognize that managing their data is as important to their success as managing bus stop infrastructure. Building on findings from a practitioner workshop I co-organized, I led writing, research, and editing for this report, produced in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute.

A Bid for Better Transit summarizes opportunities for public sector leaders to use private sector contracting as a tool for improving the delivered quality of public services—and in some cases, as a means of undertaking broader government reform. I was part of the research team for this report and coordinated its editorial process with my co-authors at TransitCenter and the Eno Center for Transportation. 

Private Mobility, Public Interest provided the transit industry’s first detailed case studies of new (though we liked “emerging” at the time) mobility partnerships. I led research for, co-wrote (with Shin-pei Tsay and Bruce Schaller), and edited this report, and managed its release through press engagement and in-person events.