Ashley Lang joined ArchTam 26 years ago after working in the government sector. She has held various major program delivery, operational and work-winning leadership roles in Australia and Asia, including leading ArchTam’s Asia Pacific oil & gas business and, most recently, as Environment & Energy regional business line director in Australia and New Zealand.

Tell us about what inspired you to join the industry.

My dad was a high school mathematics teacher, and he encouraged me in this area from a young age. My interest in science and engineering also grew over time, and I wanted to play my part in leaving a healthy planet for future generations. I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to play a role in many community-shaping projects, from iconic infrastructure to land remediation and renewal.

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why?

Earlier in my career, I led an asset decommissioning program for one of our global Energy clients across Southeast Asia. These were former fuel storage facilities, some of which were in close proximity to residential areas. It was my second time working in ArchTam’s Asia business and another opportunity to work with teams and communities from diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds.

A key challenge in the program was receiving feedback from the communities adjacent to our works and engaging with them on technical topics in an authentic and culturally appropriate way. We overcame this challenge by recruiting additional support from our native-speaking team members and client representatives. We also worked with community leaders to hear concerns and communicate how we would mitigate them.

While quite challenging for me at the time, I reflect on this as a formative period in my personal and professional growth. I was tested to apply my knowledge and experience in new and different ways and was pushed outside my comfort zone like never before. I have applied the lessons that I learned from this experience in my other roles.

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.

I’ve had the opportunity to work on many large-scale urban redevelopments throughout my career, including the iconic Docklands precinct — one of Australia’s largest urban renewal projects, reconnecting central Melbourne with its historic waterfront.

Formerly industrial development dating back to the 1800s, these inner-city areas were identified for revitalization, and ArchTam played a lead role as a technical advisor to the government. Over several years, I worked on the precinct and infrastructure master planning, contaminated land investigation and large-scale remediation.

Today, Melbourne’s Docklands is a mix of commercial, residential and community spaces, including parks and recreational facilities. Our ArchTam office is also located here, and when I come into our office and enjoy the community spaces with my family, I think of the immense community value our technical and project work has delivered.

Share a piece of career advice.

Say “yes” to opportunities when they present themselves and go outside of your comfort zone.

Moving from Australia to a technical leadership role in Vietnam and, two years later, transferring to Singapore as a country manager propelled my professional development. With the encouragement and support of my ArchTam leaders, I took the leap, and went on to gain some great leadership experience.

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As architects, planners and designers, we can use data-driven tools and analytics to create an equity-based approach to infrastructure. To be successful, this approach should include proactive development of policies, practices and strategic investments to reverse disparity trends based on race, gender, sexual orientation or income. In order to create and facilitate more equitable infrastructures and societies, cities must analyze when and how decisions are made and how these decisions impact the most vulnerable communities. Here, we share how policy, practice and investment can help reverse infrastructure inequality.

Acknowledge the structural bias and lack of social equity in the current systems

To achieve more equitable communities, we must first acknowledge the current and historical disparity in the distribution and access to infrastructure and services, which disproportionally effects certain populations. It is critical that the larger community recognize and buy in to the efforts needed to mitigate the disparity and improve equity for all. We must also set specific goals and adopt policies to set this in motion.

Develop and adopt an equity-based framework for key decision-making

Not only can we embed equity into infrastructure decisions and prioritizations, we can make those considerations and the decision process visible through an equity-based framework, or Equity Lens. By viewing development options through an Equity Lens, key decision makers can understand the equity implications of each action as well as resulting performance and cost. The Equity Lens can be applied to individual projects as well as broader programs which will allow capital planning budgets to fund projects which address equity issues and performance gaps.

Use data-driven tools to incorporate equity in infrastructure decisions

With the right data-driven tools, incorporating equity-based thinking in planning and programming projects can become an intuitive and straightforward part of the process. With automated tools to guide city engineers, planners and policy makers through an equity-based process for project and program development, we can help achieve important equity goals and outcomes. When these tools are aligned to existing workflows, are user-friendly, transparent and accessible, cities and agencies can make decisions that are not only cost effective and high-performing but can also help to reverse disparity.

Track progress over time

While we cannot solve decades of inequity overnight, we can make progress working together on small and large efforts, incrementally and persistently. By tracking progress through real quantifiable metrics, creating department and agency accountability with regular reporting requirements and review by City Councils and the public, we can propel meaningful change in our communities.

Empower the community

Communities need a real voice in this process and should participate not just through engagement and outreach for a plan, but also in setting specific equity outcome goals. A regular equity dialog between citizens, policymakers, and project engineers is essential. Discussions around education, awareness, and citizen advocacy can positively affect how equity considerations drive critical infrastructure decisions. If we can create a system for continued feedback and channel that into the evaluation framework, we can not only empower our communities but begin to create equity in our built environments.

Project Highlight:

Baltimore’s Equity-Based Project Prioritization Tool

In Baltimore, we are working with the Department of Public Works to prioritize capital investment for infrastructure projects. Which projects should move forward? Equity is the priority. By using this online tool developed by ArchTam, the Department of Public Works can view projects through an ‘Equity Lens’ which aggregates data such as percentage of disadvantaged and/or minority populations within the project area and enables the City to evaluate multiple locations. Each potential infrastructure project receives a scorecard for project performance, equity and combined performance and equity to help the City make the most equitable infrastructure investment choices.

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Several years ago, a conversation with a colleague inspired me to explore the answers to these and other questions. After all, developing impactful transit networks is an art and a science requiring insight and analysis to achieve success. New transit systems and extensions require major financial investments from the federal government, transit agencies, states and municipalities. A new tool, Triple A Transit Planning and Implementation (Triple A) — named for its examination of access, availability and advantage — provides information that enables these entities to shape successful new transit lines and extensions that deliver sweeping benefits. Here we offer insights into Triple A and how its use in geographical and geopolitical contexts helps develop successful transit systems.

What is Triple A?

Triple A is an approach to transit development based on the principle that riders will use public transportation if it incorporates the following three elements:

• Access: Ease of getting to the system through varied transportation modes, including walking, biking, park and ride facilities, transit transfer, taxi and rideshares.
• Availability: Safe and efficient operations with a meaningful span of service and frequency for a wide range of travel needs. In short, a system that takes riders where they need to go, when they need to get there.
• Advantage: Transit that competes with the next best travel time option, offering convenience, reliability, cost and environmental considerations.

How was Triple A developed?

My colleague, who I referred to earlier, asked me about the elements that factored into distinct rail transit ridership results for three separate regional rail systems. While the two lines and one extension had opened within a few years of each other, the extension into a new area of the metropolitan region gained fewer riders than the two new rail transit projects. One of the new projects, the Phoenix Central Valley light rail, was highly successful in terms of ridership results. This was surprising given that it was built in a region that historically invested in highway expansion for single-occupant cars, rather than in public transit.

To understand what influenced these results, I studied the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database (NTD), which collects data annually from every transit agency in the country. I examined transit system development information, including station spacing, average speed and the amount of system elevated versus at grade. My findings came down to access, availability and advantage. These factors brought the Phoenix light rail line’s success into clear focus. Valley Metro Rail, the local transit agency, imbedded access, availability and advantage in the Central Valley light rail. Valley Metro redesigned the bus system to make the line accessible. The light rail is available as it operates frequently, running from the suburbs through downtown, connecting two university campuses, as well as an international airport. As a result of effective station spacing, the line also offers the advantage of comparable travel time. With that in mind, Triple A became a principle that could be applied across transit systems to develop effective new lines, systems and extensions.

Understanding Triple A in a community context

While the broad principles of Triple A are part of an effective design tool, they do not work in a vacuum. While new transit often extends across a megaregion, transit is decidedly local with local community impacts. Further, each community has its own unique context comprised of different geopolitical ecosystems, geographies, land use policies and funding capabilities. Communities also have different geophysical potential for constructability, which factors in space, potential ridership and land use policies. Balancing this community context with Triple A elements empowers agencies to establish the best local delivery and overall route and line development. Putting this into a three-part Venn diagram, the transit “sweet spot” is the intersection, based on community context, of access, availability and advantage.

Before transit boards make decisions about station placement, they must understand the impacts on their constituencies and work to resolve community concerns. On the local level, agencies planning to build stations within a community must lay the groundwork months ahead of these decisions through consensus building, speaking at community board and grassroot organization meetings, actively listening to local concerns, and making concerted efforts to meet local community needs.

I used active listening in conjunction with the Triple A method in Seattle helping a regional transit agency, Sound Transit, pass an $18 billion funding initiative. In what was then my capacity as Sound Transit’s planning and development director, I worked directly with the executive director of Transportation Choices, a major community-based statewide coalition and was able to listen to and resolve local community concerns. Now, as a transportation professional at ArchTam, I am part of a team of technical and policy analysis experts who can use this experience to support transit agencies across the United States and around the globe.

Triple A, in its flexibility, can be adjusted to address local context considerations. Using these principles together with the community context can inform transit agencies, helping them avoid the extremes of lowest cost-lowest benefits and highest cost-lowest benefits. Triple A allows agencies to strike the perfect balance and deliver transit services that generate regional and local benefits for years to come.

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