The book, by Joshua Schank with Emma Huang and Marla Westervelt Berg, offers pragmatic lessons for driving change inside public agencies, from people who've done it. Dr. Schank is a Partner at InfraStrategies LLC and Executive Director of the ACES Mobility Coalition. ​​​​​​​

LOS ANGELES, California, March 31, 2026 – Transit agencies across the country are navigating shrinking budgets, pressure to attract new riders, and growing demands to bring on new technologies. A new book from three veterans of Los Angeles Metro's Office of Extraordinary Innovation (OEI) is the guide many in the field of public transit, and people who care about the mission of any government organization, have been waiting for. It offers a practical, honest account of what it actually takes to drive change from inside a large public agency.

New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies: Improving Policy Outcomes in the Public Sector, published by Business Expert Press, is now available. The authors, Joshua Schank, Emma Huang, and Marla Westervelt Berg, worked together inside OEI, an office within LA Metro, to reimagine what a large transit agency could do. During that time, they launched on-demand transit, advanced congestion pricing, built a strategic plan that still guides Metro today, and learned hard lessons about what makes change stick and what makes it stall.

Schank, now a partner at InfraStrategies LLC and the Executive Director of the ACES Mobility Coalition, a public sector led advocacy organization dedicated to advancing shared autonomous mobility, says the book is built around what the authors learned on the job. “This is a practical guide drawn from authentic and often entertaining experiences,” he said. “It gets at how to build political capital and when to cut your losses. It covers OEI's failures as honestly as its successes. This book is not just about ideas or plans. It's about politics, personalities, process, power, and the amusing challenges trying to make change in the public sphere. We share our experience not because it's perfect, but because it's real!"

The lessons extend well beyond Los Angeles and LA Metro. Any public servant, transit professional, board member, or civic entrepreneur trying to move an institution forward will find something useful here.

The book is already receiving praise from across the transportation and public policy community:

"Anyone dedicated to reforming public agencies and modernizing transit service in cities should read New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies." — David Bragdon, Former Executive Director of TransitCenter

"Cities face big transportation problems, and they cannot be solved without innovative thinking and major policy change... Fortunately, [the authors] took some hard knocks that you can learn from." — Gabe Klein, Former Director of the Chicago and Washington, DC Departments of Transportation

"Making change in public institutions is hard! Schank, Huang, and Westervelt recount amusing stories of their successes and failures at LA Metro to illustrate how we can make things happen!" — Nadine Lee, President and CEO, Dallas Area Rapid Transit

New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies is available now in paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63742-944-0) and e-book (ISBN: 978-1-63742-945-7) through Business Expert Press and major booksellers. The development of this book was supported in part by the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University.

About the Authors

Joshua Schank is a Partner at InfraStrategies, Executive Director of the ACES Mobility Coalition, a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Institute for Transportation Studies, and a Research Associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. He is the former Chief Innovation Officer at LA Metro and former President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation.

Emma Huang is a Principal Consultant at InfraStrategies, where she helps transit agencies navigate strategic and operational challenges. She previously spent over six years at LA Metro's Office of Extraordinary Innovation.

Marla Westervelt Berg is a Principal at Cityfi, where she helps governments and private-sector companies navigate the rules, politics, and partnerships that shape civic innovation. She was a founding member of LA Metro's Office of Extraordinary Innovation, has led global policy at the Coalition for Reimagined Mobility, and built regulatory strategy from the inside at Bird.