About | Liam Blank
Liam Blank
About

I work on rail systems and the institutions that run them.

Over the past twelve years, I have worked across technical modeling, state legislation, rider advocacy, public-records law, and infrastructure accountability. The throughline is simple: major transportation decisions should be tested against the operating facts and the public record.

Throughline

From corridor math to public records.

I started with rail feasibility work: travel times, curves, grades, dwell assumptions, station capacity, and the operating patterns that make a plan work or fail. That technical work led naturally to the institutions around it: boards, statutes, procurement, consultant scopes, coalition campaigns, and the documents that explain why agencies make the choices they make.

Today, my work sits between those two worlds. I test the operating case, recover the paper trail, and help advocates, reporters, legal teams, funders, and civic institutions turn evidence into arguments that can survive public scrutiny.

Professional background

Career
Timeline

Twelve years working on rail systems and the institutions that run them, across technical analysis, policy development, rider advocacy, and public-records practice.

B.A., Urban Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University.

Chair, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee

The City Club of New York

Directing committee research, federal policy engagement, public-records practice, and external communications on Penn Station and regional rail.

Key Initiative: Penn Station Records

  • Filed FOIA and FOIL administrative appeals seeking records behind feasibility claims, coalition spending, contracts, invoices, and campaign materials.
  • In 2025, the Federal Railroad Administration initiated an independent Penn Station Service Optimization Study to evaluate operational alternatives to the prior expansion plan.

Associate Director

Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA (PCAC)

Led strategic planning, legislative tracking, and fare policy research for a legislatively mandated rider advocacy organization.

Policy & Communications Manager

Tri-State Transportation Campaign

Authored the NJ Transit governance reform blueprint, worked on congestion pricing advocacy, and produced regional rail policy analysis.

Key Initiative: NJ Transit Reform Act

  • Authored the blueprint report underpinning S630 / P.L. 2018, c.162.
  • The law expanded the board from eight to thirteen members, created dedicated rider voting seats, and added stronger oversight tools.

Transportation Analyst

ReThink Studio

Developed low-cost rail corridor feasibility methods for testing underused and abandoned rights-of-way across the Northeast, including work tied to Regional Unified Network concepts.

Anchor points

A few examples. Not the whole archive.

RPA and Amtrak contract record

Penn Station Records

Public-records work seeking the documents behind feasibility claims, coalition spending, contracts, invoices, and campaign materials tied to the Penn Station expansion debate.

View Records Archive
NJ Transit reform law document

NJ Transit Governance Reform

Policy research and statutory design that informed the NJ Transit Corporation Reform and Reorganization Act, signed in 2018.

View Work Archive
From Here to There regional rail report

Regional Rail and Corridor Analysis

Technical and policy work on through-running, regional rail integration, and underused rail corridors across the Northeast.

View Regional Rail Work

The fuller project list belongs on My Work.

Advocacy & Media

Public Engagement

Reports and records rarely move institutions by themselves. The work also has to reach reporters, public officials, civic institutions, and the people affected by the decision.

Selected op-eds, interviews, citations, testimony, and public commentary are collected in the media archive.

Liam Blank speaking with NBC4 about congestion pricing
Liam Blank interviewed on NY1
Liam Blank connected to Bronx bus network redesign advocacy
Liam Blank at Bronx Busway launch
Collaboration

Working together

I work with civic organizations, legal teams, funders, reporters, and public-interest researchers on transportation decisions where the operating case, institutional incentives, or public record need to be tested.