Felix Stetsenko // Senior Consultant at WSP USA
Felix is a Senior Consultant with WSP Advisory Services’ Business Transformation national practice area. Felix works with local governments, transit agencies, and railroads to help them do more – operate faster and more reliable transit systems, deliver transformation investments quicker and at lower cost, reduce energy costs and consumption, and empower their employees to make the best decisions and continuously improve operations. His experience includes driving forward the planning for and implementation of a transit agency’s vision for a transformation of its rail infrastructure division from a reactive (coordinating triage and repair of broken assets) to a proactive operation focused on improving asset reliability and preventing asset failures, guiding development of a governance framework for a hypothetical cross-border high speed rail corridor, and streamlining communications and incident response protocols within a rail operations control center with an aim to improve safety and reduce response timelines.
He has a B.A. in Economics from Amherst College and is an avid train enthusiast, cyclist, swimmer, and urban explorer. Felix is passionate about trains and transportation, their intersection with urban policy and development, and building more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable cities and regions.
I’m passionate about making transportation work better – it’s the path towards a more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future.
Why transportation?
Robust transportation links people to jobs, neighborhoods to healthy food, kids to schools, and communities to each other. It’s the lifeblood of our communities – and congested highways, unsafe streets, and unreliable mass transit imperils lives and livelihoods. I’m passionate about making transportation work better – it’s the path towards a more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future.
What’s your favorite way to get around the YPT-NYC region?
Citi Bike!
If you could snap your fingers and make one change to regional transportation, what would it be?
Bring a Paris RER-type regional rail network to New York.
Imagine a world where one can travel from Jamaica Station to Newark (extend PATH to Atlantic Terminal… and continue running along the LIRR’s Atlantic branch!), White Plains to Paterson (link Grand Central and Penn Station via new tunnels… and through-run Metro-North out to New Jersey), or Hoboken to 125th Street (tunnel under the Hudson… and build a new corridor up through Manhattan). We’d have a better-connected region, with a larger and more integrated labor market (commutes – and jobs – once impossible can now be made with ease), healthier housing market (affordable, further-flung places are now within easy-commuting distance from our job hubs), and reduced emissions (commutes that are only feasible with a car today can be replaced by mass transit).
New York would be a richer region with it… we just need a new regional governance framework to get it done!
Do you have a favorite transportation book, blog, newsletter, podcast, or YouTube channel?
Citynerd for the urbanist content and dry (but great!) humor, AASHTO’s Daily Transportation Update for news about all things transportation (my day would be incomplete without it!), Mass Transit magazine for deep dives into public transit happenings around North America.
YPT-NYC 