Nolan Hicks is a Research Scholar in the Transportation and Land Use program of the NYU Marron Institute. He’s spent a decade reporting on and writing about New York City government and politics, including authoring investigative pieces that examined how the MTA designs subway stations and why city services frequently fail to reach the needy and mentally ill. His stories across his career have prompted reforms and helped lead to federal prosecutions. At Marron, he led the group’s development of a groundbreaking passenger rail modernization design framework, Momentum, that was released to acclaim in 2025. Most recently, served as the project editor of the group’s ‘A Better Billion’ study, the much-talked about report that provided the first wholistic city-wide assessment of potential subway expansion in decades. Nolan’s current projects include further developing the Momentum framework by applying to major transit systems in the US beyond New York.