Joshua L. Schank is president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a non-profit foundation with the mission of improving transportation policy and leadership. He is an urban planner who has worked on federal and state transportation policy over a decade. Prior to joining Eno, he directed the National Transportation Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center which proposed a new vision for the federal role in surface transportation policy. Schank was transportation policy advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton during the development of the last six-year transportation authorization bill (SAFETEA-LU).
Schank has also worked as a consultant with PB Consult and senior associate at ICF International in Washington, D.C., as well as the Office of the Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Transportation, and with the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City.
Schank’s interests in transportation are broad but he began his career in public transit at the MTA, and continues to work extensively on public transit leadership and policy issues. His multimodal understanding pays dividends to transit because he understands and extensively researches transportation policy and planning problems, and sees things in all modes that are relevant to transit. In talking with the press he addresses the national market but is able to individualize and disseminate messages to select cities and markets so readers can understand how federal, state and local policy affects them directly. Throughout his career he has shown a capacity for innovation with numerous research projects that have had a tremendous impact on the industry, most recently autonomous vehicles and public-private partnerships.
In the three years Schank has served as president, he has taken Eno from obscurity to the national stage and has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, the Associated Press, Bloomberg television and Fox Business News where he was able to share and analyze transportation policy issues that impact the entire country.
He is a frequent speaker at meetings across the country, sharing first-hand knowledge of transportation policy and what needs to change in order to continue a functioning and fully funded system. His distinguished career in transportation demonstrates his enduring and exceptional commitment to the betterment of the transportation industry.
His extensive work in transportation policy and planning is well documented in his publications, including his book “All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight Over Highway Funding.” 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.
“When I was 10 years old, my family moved to Paris, France for a year. Having lived mostly in suburban Connecticut prior to that — in a town with no transit system — I had been restricted in my movements to wherever my parents could drive me. In Paris I was introduced to the Metro and given free rein to explore the transit system and the city on my own. In fact, I would spend hours after school with friends just riding every line in the city. The freedom, excitement and mobility I enjoyed on the Paris Metro and bus system stirred a passion inside me for public transit that has always remained strong.”
“Transit needs to innovate to avoid being marginalized and to continue to grow. Technology is moving fast and enabling multiple new car-free mobility alternatives such as car-sharing, bike-sharing, and on-demand rides. Transit must figure out how to adapt and innovate in order to keep up, and to focus more on effective and flexible operations. But more importantly, transit needs to view these new technologies and businesses as partners with similar goals. Instead of adopting a defensive posture, it will be critical for transit to both effectively partner and compete with these new alternatives in order to survive and thrive.”
