James Wong

James serves as the Executive Director for NYC Ferry. He began working at NYCEDC in 2014 in a planning role for passenger ferries, a nascent idea when the East River Ferry was still a pilot service. Since then, James has overseen the planning, implementation, and launch of the NYC Ferry system, which opened in May 2017 and now serves over 6 million riders annually. He built a dedicated department and leads an agency-wide effort to ensure the safe and efficient operation of ferries. Today, he manages a team that handles NYC Ferry contracting, finance, operations, and the fleet of vessels, while overseeing other NYCEDC work in connection with landing maintenance and delivery of new ferry facilities.

A transportation planner and engineer by education, James previously consulted on street design, transit operations, and corridor planning projects for cities around the United States and abroad. He has published multiple peer-reviewed research articles on transit data, operations, and system management. James has a bachelor’s of science in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and master’s degrees in civil engineering and city and regional planning from Georgia Tech.