Josephine Dine

Jo Dine is a second-year master’s student in urban and regional planning at UCLA, with a concentration in transportation policy and planning. Her primary interests are at the intersection of housing and transportation policy and how they both can promote or hinder mobility justice. She has been working in communications at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, as a graduate student researcher in the Chicana/o and Central American Studies Department, and as an intern at the City of West Hollywood Rent Stabilization Division. She is originally from New York City and received her B.A. from Hamilton College, where she studied public policy and philosophy.

Project Overview

The Partnerships for Innovative Deployment team at Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is preparing to partner with their member agencies to help fund and manage new transportation pilot projects across the region. The team is interested in the evaluation of transportation pilots, how to determine whether a pilot should be discontinued or extended, and how to effectively transition a pilot into a long-term program. Even when pilots seem to have promising results, there often is not a plan in place for long-term funding and operations. 

Why is this topic, specifically, important to you?

I became interested in the use of pilot projects as a policy tool when I realized that many of the infrastructural and policy changes I have experienced through walking, biking, or using transit were originally pilot projects. They align with my interests in municipal governance and demonstrate the importance of testing out ideas that may be unpopular or unfamiliar, especially given the urgent circumstances we are facing in terms of climate justice and other social inequities. Rather than choosing not to act at all, agencies can use pilots to experiment with innovative processes or technologies and show residents that they are committed to challenging the status quo. 

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will you be working with them?

I have been working with Kate Kigongo and Erin Barry at SCAG. They have provided clear direction and guidance for the research questions and project scope, as the findings will be relevant to their ongoing work on SCAG’s Regional Pilots Initiative through 2026.

How do you hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

I hope this project provides a useful overview of patterns and themes from previous transportation pilot projects and tangible ways that SCAG and its member agencies can determine the future of their pilots. More generally, I would hope that agencies start to recognize the usefulness of transportation pilots and maybe start to use them more intentionally as an initial step towards their large-scale goals.