Winning the Genius Transit Challenge

Craig Avedisian (LAW’93) has a plan to fix NYC’s failing MTA subway

November 26, 2018
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When he arrived at the launch of the Genius Transit Challenge, Craig Avedisian felt like David in a midtown Manhattan ballroom full of Goliaths. The contest, with total prize money of $3 million, was open to anyone with ideas for improving New York City’s antiquated, maddeningly slow, miserably overcrowded, chronically underfunded, debt-ridden subway system. Outsiders were welcome. No idea was too crazy.

CEOs of transportation companies had jetted in from Paris, London, Zurich, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. They talked in their own lingo about dwell times and forced block signaling. The ballroom’s preferred seating rows filled up with teams from multibillion-dollar transportation titans Bombardier (66,000 employees), Bechtel (50,000), and Beijing-based CRRC (183,000), merely the world’s largest supplier of rail transit equipment.

Then there was Avedisian…

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Winning the Genius Transit Challenge

  • Sara Rimer

    Senior Contributing Editor

    Sara Rimer

    Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald, Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times, where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

    She can be reached at srimer@bu.edu.

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