- Alma Mater: University of California, Berkeley and Tufts University
- Favorite Station Visited: Rotterdam Centraal. This station area used to be entirely auto-oriented, but it was remade over a decade as part of the country's strategy for transportation and economic development. The station has a simple design that honors the city's history and spills out into great public spaces. It shows you that it is possible to rewrite your future with a little vision and commitment.
- Favorite Stop Frequented: Diridon Station in San Jose because it has limitless potential to be a gateway to the city and the Bay Area, and a new anchor of public life. El Cerrito Plaza BART Station because you can see the Golden Gate Bridge from the platform.
Laura Tolkoff believes that transportation stretches beyond mobility to include city-building, economic development and social cohesion. This is a value that she brings into her work at San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). She thinks comprehensively about what it will take to make transit succeed, from land use changes, location and access to funding streams, user experience and governance.
She is credited with helping to shape the remaking of San Jose’s Diridon Station, the station area and downtown San Jose, Calif. The project includes $10 billion in rail investments plus 240 acres of developable land around the station and is described as the largest transportation and city-building opportunity in the Bay Area.
Diridon represents a chance to integrate more transit modes more seamlessly than any other place in the region, while giving shape to a greater downtown San Jose. However, fragmented decision-making, a lack of shared vision, limited public sector resources and staffing, and a lack of experience in urban megaproject planning and delivery were holding the station back.
Tolkoff designed and facilitated a multi-day European educational and advocacy trip to help show stakeholders what was possible to realize a bigger vision for Diridon. As a result, key decision-makers authored a new vision statement for the station and station area and embarked on a new integrated station area plan.
She helped establish and elevate regional attention and civic support for the project, leading working groups and authoring numerous articles about what it would take to reconstruct a great station and neighborhood. She also played a key role in analyzing the potential to increase building heights and development potential in the station area without impacting the airport, the airlines and their passengers—helping to make sure the land use would bring more riders within reach.
Currently, Tolkoff is working on rail integration efforts and governance reform at the regional scale and on SPUR’s first regional strategy, an aspirational civic vision for the Bay Area for the next half-century and policy roadmap to achieve it.
“Cities always feel alive. I believe that cities are amazing places and that we shouldn't have to travel thousands of miles to experience them.”
“I enjoy working with multiple cities and transit agencies and problem-solving together -- there's a lot more that is shared than different. Ultimately, we're all city-building.”
“The most challenging part of my job is trying to make the invisible become visible. There are a lot of policies and rules that hold back public transit -- part of what SPUR does is surface these policies and rules to show that our problems are not inevitable.”
“The public transit industry in the Bay Area is an exciting place. At the same time that the Bay Area's transit agencies are working to maintain aging systems, they're also contemplating the next set of major investments for the future generations. There's a lot on the line with every decision.”
