About Me

My name is Alex Schieferdecker.

When I was a toddler in New York City, I’d demand that my parents take me down to the subway to watch the trains pass by for hours. From my earliest years, I’ve had a keen interest in cities.

That interest led me to earn a BA in geography from Macalester College and a MA in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

In my work and studies, I’ve focused on two topics: transportation and urban design. I’m dedicated to building multi-modal transport systems in cities, many of which have oriented themselves almost exclusively around the automobile for decades. I’m also fascinated by our great urban spaces and what makes them so successful.

Of course, these two areas of focus are just two perspectives on the same thing. How people linger in public spaces is tied to how they travel through them. You cannot conceive of one without the other.

I work as a transportation planning consultant in Philadelphia, and I spend some of my free time writing. Pocket Track is where that writing goes. A pocket track is a short piece of track on a railroad, usually between two active tracks, where trains can lay over. This blog is a place for me to park some of my thoughts and ideas about things outside of my day-to-day work.