Chrissy Mancini Nichols is Walker’s National Director for Curb Management and New Mobility. Based in San Francisco, she also leads Walker’s Northern California parking and mobility practice. She is leading a research and development initiative with cities across the nation to review and test technology to collect curb use data and implement curb management solutions to manage demand, congestion, and promote access and safety. The research is also creating curb space typologies based on city priorities and adjacent land use well as evaluating policy issues including curb monetization.
Highlights of Chrissy’s portfolio and experience include:
- Microtransit: Designing and implementing a shared electric vehicle microtransit service in Fresno County, CA
- Micromobility: Planning and implementing a micromobility program and successfully securing an operator for the City of Columbia, MO and University of Missouri
- Parking and Curb Pricing: Planning and policies for demand-based parking pricing and curb access fees for the City of Boulder, CO
- Curb Management Policy: Designing curb management policies and fees for the City of Sacramento, CA
- Sustainable Parking and Mobility Policies: Implementing sustainable parking and transportation policies for the cities of Sunnyvale, CA, West Sacramento, CA and County of Alameda, CA
- Curb Management Planning: Creating a regional curb management guide for the North Central Texas Council of Governments in Dallas/Ft-Worth, TX
- Parklets and Streateries: Creating design standards and regulations for parklets and “streateries” in the City of Benicia, CA
- Ride App Passenger Loading Zones: Designing and implementing passenger loading zones for Ride App pickup and drop-off in several cities, airports, arenas, and stadiums across the country.
Chrissy has extensive experience working with local and regional governments and transit agencies. She was previously the Transportation Policy Manager at Remix, a planning platform for public transit used by more than 350 agencies worldwide.
For seven years Chrissy was the Director of Transportation at the Metropolitan Planning Council, a regional planning organization in Chicago. During this time, she worked to pass transit-oriented development zoning reforms, build bus rapid transit, refine two federal transportation bills and a state capital program to create more sustainable funding sources and transportation policies, implement congestion pricing, and create a state P3 intermediary. She also led a strategy to create a new transit funding mechanism for the City of Chicago to fund $10 billion in transit projects and redevelop Chicago Union Station through value capture financing.
Chrissy has worked on several state and local public-private partnerships including for transit, highways, parking assets, and airports. She led a financial analysis of the City of Chicago’s parking meter concession to renegotiate the agreement with the private concessionaire to reduce the City’s annual payment. She also led a process to explore privatization of Midway Airport that included a financial and policy evaluation to ensure the City’s long-term interests were secured.
While completing her Master’s degree, Chrissy was granted a U.S. State Dept. professional fellowship to work in Ho Chi Min City and Danang, Vietnam advising local governments on using public-private partnerships to build infrastructure including transit, bike share, water systems, bridges, and placemaking.
Chrissy co-hosts Mondays at the Overhead Wire, a weekly podcast on planning, land use, and mobility issues. You can read more about her work at My Curious City.
Education
Master of Science in Public Policy and Administration, Northwestern University
Bachelor of Science in Education, Youngstown State University
Affiliations
- International Parking and Mobility Institute’s Curb Accessibility Committee
- Urban Land Institute
- California Public Parking Association
- Chicago Transit Authority’s Bus Rapid Transit Steering Committee
- Chicago Mayoral Transportation and Infrastructure Transition Team
- Chicago Midway Airport Privatization Advisory Panel
- Professional Fellow, U.S. Department of State, Young Southeast Asian Leader’s Initiative
Presentations and Publications
- The Billion Dollar Curb multi-article series, American Planning Association Magazine, May – December 2021.
- Presenter, The Not So Humble Curb: Leveraging Your Most Valuable Asset to Achieve Your Community’s Goals,International Parking and Mobility Institute Innovation Summit, February 2021.
- Surveying the Current Curb Management Tech and Policy Landscape, International Parking and Mobility Institute Magazine, January 2021.
- Presenter, Curb Management & Off-Street Parking Strategies to Navigate the New Normal & Beyond, California Public Parking Association Annual Conference, November 2020.
- Moderator, Moving to the Transportation Future, an Election Night Live Stream, November 2020.
- Presenter, The Value of the Curb: Organization, Regulation, and Monetization of Your Precious Right of Way, American Planning Association, October 2020.
- Presenter, Parking Minimums and Curb Management, International Parking and Mobility Institute Annual Conference, July 2020.
- Presenter, Regional Curb Management Workshop, North Central Texas Council of Governments, February 2020.
- Presenter, Kicked to The Curb: Exploring Curb Uses & Curb Management Strategies in Different Contexts, American Planning Association, June 2019.
- Saying Farewell…..Maybe. Are Parking Minimums a Thing of the Past? The Parking Professional, May 2019.
- Are Parking Minimums a Thing of the Past? ITE Journal, February 2019.
- Presenter, Implementing Paid Parking, California Public Parking Association, November 2018.
- Presenter, How to Build High Tech Parking to Maximize Land, California Public Parking Association, November 2018.
- Presenter, How Will Autonomous Vehicles Change Public Transit, Remix Webinar, June 2017
- Work also featured and cited in national journals, studies, and other publications, such as The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, National Public Radio, CBS News, The Atlantic,The Government Finance Officers Association’s Government Finance Review, The Chicago Policy Review, Streetsblog, BusRide Magazine, Chicago Magazine, the Urban Land Institute Magazine, the Sustainable Cities Collective, Planetizen, The Brookings Institution, the Mayors Innovation Project, Center for American Progress, and the biography Seeking Bipartisanship: My Life in Politics, by former U.S. Dept. of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
