Attendees to the 2016 Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) Summer Meeting, held earlier this week on the USC campus and hosted by METRANS, enjoyed a luncheon keynote presentation by Joshua L. Schank, the first Chief Innovation Officer for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro).

In his presentation, Dr. Schank described the way he views his role as head of the new Office of Extraordinary Innovation (OEI) at Metro and how he envisions the OEI’s role for LA County. He remarked that implementing innovation in the transportation world is more challenging than generating innovative ideas, hence the need for offices like the OEI. Implementing innovation requires “extraordinary” effort, he stated, since transportation authorities tend to obey Newton’s First Law: “objects at rest stay at rest, and objects in motion stay in motion.”

Dr. Schank also imparted his strategy in creating a team capable of recognizing and honing innovative ideas for implementation. He shared that OEI hires are largely practitioners from outside Los Angeles, who are unversed in the region’s transportation politics. This strategy permits the OEI to propose mobility solutions without preconceptions about their political feasibility. In addition, the OEI employs its own in-house researcher to cross-examine work done by agencies resistant to particular solutions.

During the Q&A session following his presentation, scholars and academic administrators in the audience queried Dr. Schank for his thoughts on issues that influence implementation of innovative transportation programs—issues including labor relations, inter-agency politics, and sectorial risk aversion. He reflected on past incidents in which these issues had threatened to impede progress on experimental Metro programs, suggesting that mitigating fallout after a positive impactful change is healthier than inaction.

One of the final suggestions Schank gave the audience was, “Never take no as an answer, because it will always be the answer.” This rule, he said, defines a core aspect of the OEI’s administrative mission.

The presentation fit well within the three-day event’s overall themes of change within the transportation world and enabling transformational implementation of research. A few professionals leading sessions later in the conference even evoked Dr. Schank’s words in relation to their own presentation topics.

Dr. Schank was previously President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, Director of the National Transportation Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Transportation Policy Advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton during the development of the last surface transportation authorization bill (SAFETEA-LU). He holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University, a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.A. in Urban Studies from Columbia University.

Griffin Kantz

Kantz is a third-year undergraduate studying Sustainable Planning in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].