Schaller Consulting

Bruce Schaller, Principal of Schaller Consulting, is a widely recognized expert in new mobility and for-hire services, public transit and urban traffic. He is the author of widely-cited reports assessing how new services such as Uber and Lyft have improved mobility and raised concerns about their impacts on traffic and transit in U.S. cities and developing prescriptions for public policy.

Mr. Schaller has consulted to government, for-profit and non-profit organizations throughout North America. Most recently, he served as Deputy Commissioner for Traffic and Planning at the New York City Department of Transportation, where he led the agency's widely-recognized innovations in street design, traffic management, parking policy, bus rapid transit and performance measurement. He also led NYCDOT's efforts on congestion pricing in 2007-08.

Mr. Schaller has been called "a prominent transportation expert" (New York Times), "a widely acknowledged expert" on issues related to taxis, Uber and Lyft (Politico) and a "nationally recognized expert” on for-hire transportation issues (Washington Post). Mr. Schaller has published extensively in peer-reviewed academic journals including Transport Policy, Transportation and the Journal of Public Transportation.

He is currently working on a book about the origins of American cities, and recently released a report that examines overlapping themes focused on the economic and spatial development of great urban centers in the United States.

Contact information: bruceschaller2 "at" gmail.com. Phone: 718-768-3487.

The Covid-19 pandemic was tremendously disruptive to American life and had profound effects on American cities and metropolitan areas. This report seeks to unpack the effects of the pandemic on urban America and place these effects on a much larger canvas that includes the urban revival of the last four decades and the advent of the knowledge-based economy as the key driver of metro area growth and prosperity. The overall question and focus of this report is what the pandemic together with this larger picture mean for the future of the American metropolis.

• Summary and overview
• Full report (pdf file)
• PDF file to print double-sided (odd numbered pages will be on the right)
• Phone-friendly PDF

CityLab article by Patrick Sisson: The housing crisis’ economic toll: The damaging ripple impact from a lack of affordable homes

Previous Publications

Recent reports exploring the cross-cutting issues that lie at the intersection of ride-hail and microtransit new mobility services, and traffic, transit and the future of urban transportation networks. The reports discuss how new mobility can contribute to the goals of public transit agencies, document TNC impacts on traffic and transit, analyze regulatory issues and address the path toward self-driving vehicles operating as shared taxi- and transit-like services.

Major reports and papers:

• Can Sharing a Ride Make for Less Traffic? Evidence from Uber and Lyft and Implications for Cities (March 2021)
• The New Automobility: Lyft, Uber and the Future of American Cities (July 2018)
• Making Congestion Pricing Work for Traffic and Transit in NYC (Jan. 2018)
• Empty Seats, Full Streets: Fixing Manhattan's Traffic Problem (Dec. 2017)
• Unsustainable? The Growth of App-Based Ride Services and Traffic, Travel and the Future of New York City (Feb. 2017)

Recent articles, op-eds and presentations

• Recent Vehicle Ownership Trends in Large U.S. Cities (May 2020)
• Density Isn’t Easy. But It’s Necessary (May 2020)
• What Urban Sprawl Is Really Doing to Your Commute (Sept. 2019)
• What is Happening on the Streets of New York (video-taped interview)
• Why Reining in Ride Hailing Is So Critical
• Time For a Cap on Uber and Lyft: Why a Traffic Expert Changed His Mind
• Second Chances: Regulation and Deregulation of Taxi and For-Hire Ride Services
• An Uber and Lyft Revolution?
• The Road to Shared Autonomous Vehicles (powerpoint)

• New York City's Congestion Pricing Experience and Implications for Road Pricing Acceptance in the United States, Transport Policy Vol. 17, 2010.
• Entry controls in taxi regulation: Implications of US and Canadian experience for taxi regulation and deregulation, Transport Policy Vol. 14, 2007.
• A Regression Model Of The Number Of Taxicabs In U.S. Cities, Journal of Public Transportation, Winter 2005.

Reports of general interest to the transportation community published under my direction at the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007 to 2014:

• Making Safer Streets - the largest examination of the safety effects of innovative roadway engineering conducted in a major American city.
• The Economic Benefits of Sustainable Streets - robust metrics for assessing the local economic impacts of street improvements.
• Measuring the Street - measuring the mobility, safety and economic benefits of sustainable streets policies.
• Sustainable Streets Index - annual report on traffic and transit trends in New York City and performance metrics for major agency projects.

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