MORE TO EXPLORE: Transportation
The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service's 2019 Convocation Ceremony featured the 286 graduating students, their friends, and loved ones at New York City Center in Midtown Manhattan on May 23.
Congratulations to NYU Wagner Professor Mitchell
Dan Suraci AICP (MUP 2013) authored a national guide on bicycle and transit integration, which was published by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).
She is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and hopes to continue to work on transportation-related issues as a New York City planner.
NYU Wagner and The Century Foundation hosted the eleventh Debates of the Century on whether New York City should implement congestion pricing to tackle the mounting traffic gridlock and public transit issues facing its residents.
Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and Richard Brodsky, Former assembly member & adjunct faculty at NYU Wagner, debated for and against this motion.
| Better public transportation is widely considered to have economic and social benefits. With federal transportation infrastructure spending in decline, local governments are forced to weigh the potential benefits of investment in transportation against politically unpopular increases in taxes and fees. What is the return on investment to transportation infrastructure, and more importantly, who does it benefit? A Capstone team conducted a systematic evaluation of the economic consequences of investment in New York City’s subway system by differentiating between levels of investment and type of economic benefit. The team compiled a detailed dataset of transportation and economic indicators by zip code tabulation areas and used a variety of statistical techniques—including matching analysis—to better isolate the effect of transportation improvement. Their findings have implications for how best to prioritize the investment of limited public funds available for transportation infrastructure. |
| The World Bank is a global financial institution that issues loans to countries for development programs. The Tanzania Strategic Cities Project (TSCP) of the World Bank aims to improve the access and quality of basic urban services by financing investments in the urban infrastructure of the country’s secondary cities. The World Bank engaged a Capstone team to complement implementation support of the TSCP by assessing holistic road safety and public space networks in selected project cities. The team’s fieldwork in Arusha and Dodoma included interviewing stakeholders—including government staff, nonprofits, and community members—and visiting local parks, roads, and schools. The team also researched the primary and secondary dimensions of road safety, best practices, and case studies related to pedestrian-friendly urban design elements. Their research culminated in a final report recommending strategies and practices that enhance road safety and stakeholder engagement. |
| Dash Labs, an NYC-based startup, publishes the Dash app, which connects to cars and makes driving smarter, safer, greener, and more affordable. With nearly 400,000 downloads since the app launched in 2014, the platform collects real-world data from drivers around the world. Aiming to demonstrate the value of their data in city planning, Dash Labs engaged a Capstone team in creating visualizations and policy recommendations based on vehicle usage data within the five boroughs of NYC. By overlaying the Dash Labs data with NYC open data, the team evaluated various Vision Zero projects, including the NYC campaign to reduce the default speed limit on city streets to 25 MPH. The team substantiated the value of Dash Labs’ data through their findings, demonstrating that real-time data can aid in prioritizing and evaluating the success of initiatives—such as pedestrian safety—and highlighted policy recommendations and approaches that cities can take to best utilize this data. |
| TransitCenter is a New York-based national transit advocacy foundation. TransitCenter is at the forefront of bus advocacy across American cities, publishing bus report cards in New York and identifying key public transit deficiencies experienced by riders. TransitCenter engaged a Capstone team to assess and identify challenges to bus riders posed by the territorial division between the two subdivisions of the MTA that operate bus service in Queens: New York City Transit and Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Bus. The team explored bus service fragmentation and the operations of the bus network throughout Queens as part of a broader network design analysis. The team also analyzed bus route data and evaluated potential revisions to decades-long transit corridors to address existing bus route service inadequacies and inconsistencies. The team provided recommendations to address gaps in service, key transfer points, and scheduling conflicts. |
