Success in Long Island City: TransportationCamp 2022

Molly

On October 15, 2022 TransportationCamp-NYC was held for the first time in Queens, New York at CUNY School of Law. The program this year, back in person for the first time since the advent of COVID-19, sought to take advantage of the surrounding Long Island City, including a bike tour in partnership with Lyft and Bike JC.

TransportationCamp, an unconference where sessions are programmed and led by the attendees, was first held in New York City on March 5, 2011. Hundreds of enthusiastic participants descended upon New York Law School for that first camp to engage in networking and user-generated session topics, and in the years since, TCamp has continued to grow and thrive.

As in past years, C2SMART was a proud platinum sponsor and co-host of TransportationCamp, alongside YPT-NYC. Organizers welcomed 200 total attendees and fielded 31 attendee-designed sessions. Of those 200 participants, 30% were students whose tickets were sponsored.

“We are thrilled that we were able to offer so many subsidized tickets,” says Dr. Jingqin Gao, TransportationCamp’s lead organizer. “It is crucial that TransportationCamp remains a space that is welcoming to participants from all walks of life, and at all stages in their career – that is part of how we keep ideas fresh and conversation evolving.”

Those subsidies include students like Saba Akber, whose essay on congestion pricing in NYC won the TransportationCamp NYC 2022 Graduate Student Scholarship. “TransportationCamp was invaluable for me,” Akber said. “Many

conferences allow students in but don’t necessarily welcome them into the conversation. But at TransportationCamp we are just as much a part of the conversation as anyone else.”

TransportationCamp is run entirely by volunteers, and provides an incredible opportunity not just for graduate students, but undergraduates as well, as it is staffed in part by the NYU-ITE Student Chapter. Says president Nick Hudanich, “It’s great exposure – you get to meet and speak with your professors, classmates, and future colleagues on equal footing.”

The conference included such sessions as: 

  • Data Standards + Interoperability,
  • Is fare evasion justified? Should transit be a human right?,
  • Housing + Transit: Rebuilding Ridership by Ending the Housing Crisis (TOD),
  • Toilet Suffering Among Public Transport Operators,
  • Street Supply: The Other Half of Transport Demand, 
  • and more (see the full session list here).

The unconference concluded with a bike tour co-organized with Bike JC and supported by Lyft. 

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“It’s always so exciting to come back year after year and consistently meet with incredible students, professionals, and academics workin in this space,” says Gao. “The only thing that could top this year is next year.”

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