Episode 49 of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast explores how contextual engineering can help transportation professionals design safer, more effective projects by putting the communities they serve at the center of the process. Brandon, Jessica and Gavin are joined by Ryan Lake, roadway transportation engineer at AECOM and the first winner of the Roads and Bridges Lightning Round, to discuss his approach to understanding a community beyond reports and technical data. Lake explains the different levels of community engagement, and why engineers should spend more time in the field learning how people actually live, travel and interact with their surroundings.

Listen time

39:22

About the guest

Ryan Lake is a roadway transportation engineer for AECOM.

Here is a transcript from the episode:

GJ: And welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I'm Gavin Jenkins, head of content for Roads and Bridges, and with me, we have two of our usual suspects, Jessica Parks, staff writer for Roads and Bridges, and Brandon Lewis, he is the man and the myth. He's a legend. He is the associate editor of Mass Transit magazine, and we have a special guest. With us today, we have Ryan Lake, and Ryan Lake is the first winner of the Roads and Bridges Lightning Round, which is our game show that we're trying to get off the ground. And he also is a newly minted PE. He just passed his professional engineer exam. He has a licensed PE. Ryan Lake, welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast.

RL: Thanks. Good to be on here.

GJ: He is just overcome with excitement to be here. And you also are a roadway transportation engineer in Chicago's loop for AECOM, correct?

RL: Yep. Yeah. So I do roadway design, all types of different phase one, phase two roundabouts, roads, different community projects. So yeah.

GJ: All right. Well, we're excited to have an engineer join us, and the reason why he is joining us, ladies and gentlemen, is because he won that episode of the Roads and Bridges Lightning Round, and people who participate in our game show have the opportunity to write Op-Ed pieces for Roads and Bridges. They'll be the focus of Q&As. We're trying to create a pipeline to help the next generation of engineers become thought leaders, and we think that the game show is a fun pipeline to help people elevate their careers, and Ryan is our guinea pig, so he was a part of a Q&A that was published last week, and he is going to have an opinion piece in the next issue of Roads and Bridges, which is our September/October issue. The title of this is still a working title. I haven't edited it yet, Ryan. I proofed it, and it's really well written, but the working title is ‘Let's Use Contextual Engineering and Roadway Projects to Make our Community Safer’. So Ryan, tell us a little bit about this opinion piece. Give us the rundown.

RL: Yeah. So kind of background with my experiences when I was in college for my undergrad, I did research on contextual engineering with Dr. Anne Perry Whitmer, and this is kind of a new field that she's created and applied to different engineering projects all around the world and the key idea of contextual engineering is we need to look beyond just the technical design of the projects, and we need to really look at the communities we're designing the projects for, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you have a perfect technical design, if you design it for the wrong community, it's not going to work. So there's multiple different factors that every community has, and some communities are more impacted by some factors than others. So things like the cultural, political, economic, educational and mechanical are the five main factors that feed into what a community's identity is and how we need to change or modify our technical design to influence a working design within that community, so I write a little bit about that in the Op-Ed. And then the other main idea in the Op-Ed that I kind of touch on in contextual engineering are these levels of understanding of the community, and that's definitely something that is applicable to really any field of engineering, but specifically for me with transportation. So there's an awareness and then attestation, assimilation and then integration as the four levels. So the awareness is you're just behind the computer screen, so you're working on traffic fatality or some kind of accident, or there's traffic, and you can see that on the report. Attestation, that's kind of the next level, and that's really where most civil engineers, the highest level they get to. And that's you go out there for a day for a field visit, you can see the traffic, you can see the queuing, you see that there's a dangerous pedestrian crossing, something like that, but you can see it with your eyes, but you don't really understand the problem. The next level is assimilation. That's pretty much the highest level that is reasonable to get to, and that's maybe you spend a week there, maybe after work, instead of just going there for a field visit, you stay after, you go to the Starbucks, and you just sit on the corner, and you just watch for a couple hours. Maybe you go up to somebody who just walked across the street and you said, ‘Hey, where would you cross? Would you cross here if there was a crossing? Would you like to cross somewhere else?’ And getting that more deeper understanding of the community. And then finally, the last level is integration, and that really only comes if you live in the community. So obviously if you're an engineer working on multiple different projects in different communities, you're not going to reach that level of integration. So my argument within the Op-Ed is pushing us from just the attestation where it's just a field visit, trying to get to that assimilation where you spend more time in the community, and you can have a better understanding of what the community needs to make our roadway system safer.

GJ: What if you lived in a whimsical town and everyone was kind of silly and just a town full of silly gooses and instead of a walking pedestrian bridge, it was just kind of like a ramp up and then a zip line over the busy intersection. Why isn't that a thing in American infrastructure?

RL: I mean, if that's what the community wants, I think that's the key lesson with contextual engineering is if you were to design a zip line for a community that doesn't want it, they're not going to use it.

GJ: Yeah. No, everyone has to be on board with the zip line over the highway or else it doesn't work.

JP: So you're going to get 90-year-old zip lining.

GJ: We can't have that. And then you got to hire someone to help people into the harnesses to get across on the zip line. And then you have people that you're just like, "I think you just moved to this town for the zip line." Yep, exactly. Alright, Let's get to some questions on contextual engineering. Since this is going to be kind of like a heavy Roads and Bridges type conversation, we'll let Brandon start off with the questions because I can see the wheels turning in his head, and I already know that the first question up is going to have to do with contextual engineering and transportation, so I can feel it coming. Brandon, knock it out of the park.

BL: Well, Gavin, you are a mind reader because that's exactly where I'm going to go. So Ryan, here at Mass Transit, we also work with AECOM on various transportation projects. Obviously there's a lot of engineering that goes into railroads, busways, etc. In your various writings with Roads and Bridges and your Op-Ed, you talk a lot about your ideal scenario is for everybody to be able to access a major city within one hour just by using public transit. So can you talk a little bit about that vision?

RL: Yeah. I think that that's one of the challenges that the U.S. is facing with its overall transportation infrastructure of just. I think what I was looking at is within 30 miles of the City Center being able to get to the downtown or vice versa within an hour, and I think that that would solve a lot of issues. It's definitely something that is a major vision and not necessarily something that could be solved overnight or even with one or two projects, but something that rather societally we would have to work towards. I think there's a lot of things that go into that. The first is just an overall reliance on roads and highways, which definitely have their time and place, but then also using the existing highway system to possibly have light rail going down the middle. You can use existing right of way in certain places to maximize that and take some vehicle trips out of the equation, which would decrease traffic. It would help the environment overall. It would also decrease just overall societal stress for people using the transportation network. I was actually lucky enough to travel to Japan for work for a month in April, which was pretty cool. 

BL: Wow, that's awesome. 

RL: We were staying about 30 miles outside of Tokyo, which is kind of the outer limits of the Tokyo city center, and that's kind of where I came up with that 30 mile radius. So it was nice for a month there living 30 miles away from the city center and being able to get to the downtown in an hour transit and walking. And part of that is not just the infrastructure, but also the timing and the headways of some of those and even the spacing of the stations. I know a lot of places in the suburbs, the nearest train station is four or five miles from somebody's house, so that's a challenge. And then you get to the station and then you might have to wait half an hour for the next train. So part of the problem is it might take an hour just to get on the train if you're 30 miles outside of the city center, let alone getting to downtown, so I think there's a lot of challenges, both infrastructure wise and then also just kind of planning wise and more logistics of the existing system, but definitely something that was eye-opening being in another country and experiencing what the system could be in the future.

GJ: All right. I want to put a pin in this for one second. Japan. Let's talk about Japan for one second. Yes. Brandon, where is Japan?

BL: What do you mean?

GJ: Where in the world is Japan? Hold on. Brandon, for all of us listeners, Brandon is notoriously bad at geography, and this is now a new passion of mine because over the weekend, my nieces revealed to me how bad they are, and they're in elementary, well, one's in junior high. Actually, now that the school started too, they're both in junior high. They're so bad at geography. So Brandon, you're Googling it right now. I can see you. Where is Japan?

BL: I am not, by the way. I'm thinking.

GJ: You're thinking. Alright. I got a better question. How big is Japan? If you were to put Japan next to the U.S., how many states would the length of Japan take up?

BL: 10.

GJ: It's not bad. You're pretty close.

JP: So I would say it's maybe the Northeast region, like New England.

GJ: Well, actually, so if you put Japan in the Atlantic Ocean, it stretches pretty much the entire eastern seaboard.

JP: Oh, wow. Okay.

GJ: Japan is so much bigger than Americans realize, and Tokyo is a sprawling metropolis, and it's in Southeast Asia.

BL: I couldn't think of the name of the continent. I'll be honest with you.

JP: It is considered Southeast Asia?

GJ: Yeah, of course. It's the South Pacific.

BL: I was going through my head. I was like, South America? Yeah. No,

GJ: No, no. Brandon. South America. If you had said South America, we would've left that in. I'm going to tell you that right now. Okay. All right. Let's move on. Maz is going to try to cut that out. We're not going to let her. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about engineering. So let's talk specifically Midwestern engineering. Ryan, you are a son of the Midwest. You're from Illinois. You live in Chicago, correct?

RY: In the suburbs. My family's been here whole life.

GJ: Okay. You're becoming something of a regular here on Roads and Bridges so looking ahead 20 or 30 years, what do you hope the transportation system looks like in the Midwest, and what do you hope engineers your age are doing differently than engineers today?

RL: I mean, I think a big one is Chicago has very deep roots in the freight network. It's kind of the gateway city to the east or west, depending on the direction that you're moving. And just historically, a lot of freight moves through Chicago. That's a big piece of our history here, and I think definitely something that is going to define the system going forward, so I think one piece of that would be separating the passenger rail from the freight rail. I think that that is a bold idea that is tossed around on some projects that we're working on, and it's going to be a piece by piece thing. It's not something that, again, will be done overnight. But one of the big challenges right now with passenger rail is that it's defined by the freight rail network, a lot of it for at least suburban rail, meaning that the headways, the passenger travel times, even things like the cars themselves, the speeds that they can move and turn and all of that is based on a freight rail network. So separating that would be a big move in the right direction. And then with your question of just what the next generation I would like to see with maybe my generation in the next 20, 30 years is a bigger emphasis on community-based engineering design. So when we're working in cities, that means putting more trees in, putting bike lanes, putting bus lanes, wider sidewalks, cafe seating and changing the approach of our roadway projects from being a roadway project to being a community improvement project. I think that when we look at a corridor that includes a road, that's not the only thing that we should be looking at, and I think we need to shift the mindset of roadway projects to be community improvement projects where road is a piece of that, but we need to be looking…

GJ: But so is a coffee shop that has cafe seating. I love it.

JP: I like that too.

GJ: Yeah. Jess, what do you think? Get in there and ask a question.

JP: I guess I really love what you studied. Contextual engineering sounds, it should be a given. However, my question is what challenges do you see arising to this plan with the rise of AI and engineering becoming more of a data point on the other side?

RL: Yeah, I think it's something that we need to continue to push against for the need for human interaction in the community. I think even without AI, there's a challenge with that community-based approach just from the perspective of a lot of these companies are public for-profit companies so spending an extra four hours on the site just watching people cross the street might not be a great economic decision, and with AI, as things get more efficient, that'll only become. It's not a new problem. I think it's just a continuation of that problem, so I think it does give us opportunities though. If we have an engineering process that continues to get more efficient within the actual plan production and the technical design, that might free up more opportunities for us to have those human elements where we go out into the field. If we're able to save two, three hours on plan production, maybe that's two, three hours we get back, and we can go into the community and have some ideas on how to improve it. 

GJ: That’s really interesting. All right. Brandon, what do you think of that?

BL: Yeah, I think overall our ability to just build new roads, new sidewalks and have everything interconnected because I think one of the challenges that we're dealing with right now, particularly in terms of infrastructure, is just a lot of these roads and highways and bridges, they were all built decades and centuries ago, and a lot of them are getting worn down and just general maintenance. But now that you're seeing that, a lot of the way that people could walk or the way that people can take their bikes or not use the street, alternatively, the sidewalks are not maintained enough to have that direct access.

GJ: You know what? And that actually leads to the question that I wanted to ask. So obviously everything's not being used in the same way and also the same solutions don't cover every problem, and it's something you hit on in your essay. A roundabout isn't the solution to every problem with an intersection. So how do you know when something is right for the community? How do you know when a certain solution is the right solution, let's say a roundabout?

RL: Yeah, I think I'll use a classic story of Whitmer's from college. She got called into a community in Africa. A local community had gotten a new water distribution system provided by the UN for free, and the community broke it within a month, so the UN went back, and they fixed it, and it broke again, and the UN got very frustrated and said, ‘What is going on with this community’? We showed them how to do it. What is going on? They cannot figure this out. So Dr. Whitmer, she goes in, and she spends some time with the community. She learns about their culture, learns about their daily habits. After a week, she found the root of the problem, and that was that the women of the community broke the water system on purpose because previously, before they had the water system, they had to walk four hours a day to get water, and the UN thought, ‘Well, that's not good. Why would women want to go four hours a day and walk to get their water’? Well, it turns out the husbands were generally very controlling and never let them leave the house, so that was the only time of the day that they got to leave the house and socialize with the other women. So they broke it on purpose because they wanted to have that time back. Now they were stuck in the house, so that's something that is not necessarily transportation engineering, and it's international, but I think it kind of answers the same question with that. You need to spend time in the community to understand what they need. 

GJ: A simulation.

RL: Yeah, and if you just draw out a solution on paper, you might not get there. You might get lucky and it might work out, but it might not, so you can go in…

GJ: I'm sorry to cut you off, but I feel like that's an extreme example with a community in another continent, which is a developing nation. What about when you, Chicago suburban engineer, go to Mississippi or Arkansas, which it would be a culture shock all the same, but how do you assimilate in a community, say in the deep south, to help them come to a similar success?

RL: Yeah, I think something like. I draw up a lot of roundabouts, so I'll use that example. 

GJ: Yeah, go for it. 

RL: So in that situation, I could go on the map, I could draw out something on paper, I could look at the design vehicle, see what turning movements we need and everything. But maybe if I were to go to the community, they might have some ginormous farm equipment that would not fit on my design. And maybe I talk to whatever state DOT, they say, ‘Oh, we use this kind of farm equipment, we do this here, we do…’ But it's not till you actually go out there, you see what people are using. Maybe they only use it once a year, but maybe it's something that's so important that they need to get this piece of equipment through that's not necessarily captured by design standards or even what the DOT thinks. So something like that could be an application in a more rural setting. I think also with rural settings, a big factor in the contextual space is kind of the educational community factor, which is how willing a community is to learn a new method. So maybe with that situation, you might have a community that just will not accept anything but a standard intersection, and that's something that you should know. Even if a roundabout is on paper much safer, and it has all these different benefits, if everyone in the community is going to be really upset at the DOT and then lose all the trust with the community, maybe that's something you think about. So the one I gave is an extreme example, but then as you work within the different communities you're doing projects for, you can kind of apply that same idea of maybe it's not the same exact situation and maybe it's not so extreme, but you still want to design something that the community wants to have because otherwise you start to lose trust and then that can lead to long-term problems later on.

GJ: Why do people hate roundabouts?

RL: I think people are getting used to them. I think it's just one of those things that people are always resistant to change, but I mean, if you take Carmel, Indiana, as the example, that's kind of the roundabout mecca of the world. 

GJ: It is?

RL: It's the number one town with the most roundabouts in the world. At least it was, I assume it still is, but they had a mayor that came in, I think in the '80s or '90s and started proposing roundabouts. People were a little hesitant at first, but it was one of those things where you build trust and then they started working and then now residents are like, "I want a roundabout here. I want a roundabout here." So they just keep putting them in, so I think that's a part of contextual engineering as well as if you can push the balance of what people are comfortable with if you maintain the trust, and that's kind of the key thing. If you just go in and you put something in, and you're like, "This is better, you need to do it, this is better."

GJ: I know what's best for you. You listen to me.

JP: So I like to just say that in Massachusetts, we call roundabouts rotaries. We've had them forever.

GJ: Do you know why you guys call it rotaries?

JP: I have no idea.

GJ: Okay. All right. Well, children gather around and let the oldest person on the call tell you about a thing called a rotary phone. And a rotary phone was a dial where there were holes for each number and you'd have to go one, two. And if you had someone with numbers that were far enough down on the rotary, it would take you a minute, maybe more to dial their phone number, and it was awful, but it was a cool sound. 

JP: No, it wasn't. I would just like to say about rotaries is that I think that they are a bit intimidating. They don't necessarily seem easier, but I think what I learned recently is that obviously one of the biggest benefits of a rotary is it's eliminating that T-bone crash, the head-on-head collision, instead you're getting a sideswipe collision if you have one, and that's generally safer, and I just don't think enough people know that. I think that makes sense in your head. 

BL: Good point, Jess.

RL: Yeah. And it's not just the type of crash too, it's the speed that it occurs. I mean, not only is it a safer angle that they come in at, you're not going to be going more than 25, 30 miles an hour, which compared to some straight intersections. Somebody flying through could be going 100 miles an hour.

GJ: The problem with the roundabouts from the perspective of people who don't like them is the left turn. Because I have a bunch of roundabouts in my neighborhood here in Pittsburgh, and I see people, if they have to make a left turn, instead of going all the way around and then take the left, they just cut. They just make the sharp…

JP: Wait, what? 

GJ: I've seen this so many times, Jess. They're like, ‘I'm not going all the way around that roundabout’. And then they just take a sharp left and go into oncoming traffic and make the left. It is so crazy. It's so dangerous and people in Pittsburgh in their left turns, let me tell you.

JP: I think that might just be in Pittsburgh.

GJ: It might be. I've seen it. 

JP: I have never seen that in my life.

GJ: I've seen it so many times because I'm walking my dog, and I'm like, "Okay, that person, they see me, they're going to go around." And then all of a sudden it's like I'm jumping out of the way. And also, I think it's a very European piece of infrastructure. I think there's a certain type of American who just hates Europe and just wants nothing to do with European infrastructure. 

JP: They have them everywhere in Europe for sure.

GJ: They are everywhere. They're not called rotaries in Europe, I'll tell you that. 

JP: Yeah, they're definitely not.

GJ: Brandon, what other questions do you have about contextual engineering?

BL: Ryan, in your piece, you talked a little bit about the Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul, South Korea, as a project that always inspired you both from an engineering cultural perspective. I guess getting back to what we talked about in the beginning with Japan, is there something maybe more that you can address that maybe international countries do, in your opinion, better with transit systems overall than the United States right now?

RL: Yeah, I think bringing that example with the stream in South Korea, I think a lot of it is moving towards the community-based approach. Kind of what I spoke to a little bit before with looking at the full corridor right of way to right of way, and even what happens outside of the right of way and incorporating any and all ideas, not necessarily just putting back what is there right now, and I think that it's a really good opportunity that we have right now in the U.S. because as you were saying, a lot of the infrastructure is decaying and a lot of major highways, bridges and stuff were all built in the Eisenhower big expansion with the expressways and in the 50s, which means things are approaching their lifespan and that means that we have an opportunity to not just put back what's there right now, but really reevaluate what it could be in the future, and I think that there's a lot of corridors that maybe what's out there right now is working. But then I think there's also a lot of corridors that you take a look at, and you've got a four-lane roadway with six-foot sidewalks next to a line of businesses, and you say, ‘Well, maybe we do take this down to two lanes and put some trees in and make some wider sidewalks’. So I think the community-based approach, whether that be in Asia a lot and definitely in Europe, is something that we can learn from.

GJ: Ryan, I want to get you out of here on a question about safety. So a lot of what we're talking about also improves safety and Vision Zero is a huge, huge topic in the industry. We want to get fatalities in car crashes down to zero. If you could wave a magic wand and give every major American city the kind of transit connectivity you described in our Q&A, what do you think would happen to the way we design roads and how would that improve in safety?

RL: Yeah, I think that the Vision Zero and the community-based approaches really go hand in hand. I think when you design for a community, it makes things safer by default. A, because people are going to understand the community that they're moving through, but then also things like adding trees, having wider sidewalks, all those things that we talked about with the community-based approach also happen to slow vehicles down, which happened to decrease the number of fatalities, so it's kind of a chain reaction where if we start to work to design for the community, eventually it will move into that safer spaces. And specifically with the Vision Zero as well, there's a lot of problems with safety and every community has it as a goal to be safe and not just the communities and the DOTs. Individual residents want to feel safe, and what that means is that if that's a core value for every community, then it's something that we can use contextual engineering to think about, well, on every project, well, how could we make this corridor safer? Even if we're just putting back the similar to what is out there right now, is there one or two small little changes that we can make that would make the corridor safer? So yeah, that in combination with improving the transit and just decreasing the number of potential collisions, I think would go a long way for Vision Zero.

GJ: Awesome. I'm out of questions. Jess, Brandon, do either of you have any follow-up questions before we wrap it up?

BL: I think I'm good on my end.

JP: I guess I have one thing to say. So I know that with contextual engineering, it usually makes the argument for expanding the modes of travel that are protected and safe in those areas. So in my past life, I covered Brooklyn, and there is an area called Sunset Park, and they were trying to come up with these traffic calming methods to implement on this very busy thoroughfare, and the community was extremely against it because they were a driving community that would take away parking spaces, and it just didn't fit their needs. Adding bike lanes, expanding the sidewalks, this was an area of Brooklyn that was a little bit more transparent. I'm just wondering if sometimes you see an argument against with contextual engineering, whether you see an argument against adding these kind of more modern approaches to traffic.

RL: Yeah, no, that's a good question. And again, I think that the answer would be yes. I think that overall, when you look at what communities are wanting, they generally want some of those different modes and stuff, but there are communities that want the parking, and I think that there's a way that you can balance that. If a community is still looking to have a relatively high thoroughfare street with parking, there's still things that you can do to separate pedestrians or maybe you add a pedestrian signal or things like that. There's still ways that you can make the space safer while still designing for the roots of that community, so it just kind of depends. I think one other important distinction to make in transit is when you're designing for the community on a roadway, are you designing for the people who use the roadway or are you designing for the people who live along the roadway? And I think that could be debated at length, but I think at the end of the day, you should be designing for the people that live there. So if people who use the road as a cut-through are now upset that they can't use it as a cut-through, maybe they're only on that road for five minutes a day. People who live and work and play and stuff, they should get the final say. So I think that if the people who live there want that, I think then that's something you need to design for, but if there's a lot of angry people who are just using it as a cut-through, maybe you take a hard stance, so it just kind of depends.

JP: Yeah. Thank you.

GJ: All right. Thank you so much. Ryan Lake, a professional engineer from AECOM, based in the suburbs of Chicago. Whenever I hear about suburbs of Chicago, I think of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, 16 Candles. Brandon, are any of those movies movie titles?

BL: Home Alone.

GJ: You got Home Alone? What about About Last Night? You've seen that, right?

BL: No, I have not. 

JP: I haven't seen that either.

GJ: All right. Well, it's a good movie. All right. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for being a guinea pig, and thank you so much for writing this Op-Ed that will be in the September/October issue of Roads and Bridges, and I don't know. Who else do we have to thank, Brandon?

BL: We have to thank our lovely editor, Karina Mazhukina, as well as our parent company, Endeavor B2B.

JP: And the listeners.

GJ: And thank the listeners. Thank you for listening. Please email us at [email protected], and Ryan Lake, thank you once again for joining us.

RL: Thanks. Yeah, great to be on.

GJ: Thank you so much. All right. For Roads and Bridges, I'm Gavin Jenkins.

BL: I'm Brandon Lewis.

JP: I'm Jessica Parks.

GJ: All right. Until next time, goodbye.