Public Interest Transportation Forum - http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf

About the Editors

The Co-Editors

John Niles

John Niles is President of Global Telematics, based in Seattle, Washington. This firm works with government agencies, service delivery companies, and civic interests to synthesize and articulate new policy responses to the interaction of telecommunications, transportation, and economic development. 

Consulting projects that he has conducted include a study for the U.S. Department of Energy called Beyond Telecommuting. He has provided extensions of this work to the metropolitan area planning organizations in St. Louis, Seattle-Tacoma, and Los Angeles. He has collaborated with Dr. Dick Nelson on a long-term study of the relationships between transit-oriented development and the dynamics of consumer markets and retail industry decision-making.

He was a founding member of the Telecommunications and Travel Behavior Committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He is a Research Associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. Prior to his independent consulting, he conducted operations research as a project manager for the city government of Washington, DC.

John Niles earned a Master of Science in industrial administration at Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His opposition to investments in rail mass transit goes back to the early 1980s and originated in his judgment that Seattle mass transit without any trains worked better than in comparable cities that did have trains.  A letter from him on this point was published by the Puget Sound Business Journal in 1988 is posted here in pdf format.

Contact information:
Email: niles@globaltelematics.com
24 hour voice: (206) 781-4475
FAX: (206) 781-4475

Dick Nelson

Dick is currently a technical consultant working in the areas of transportation and telecommunications. He is a founder of and senior research analyst for Integrated Transport Research, a Washington State non-profit corporation.

In 1993 Dick contributed to a national study of the impact of telecommunications on travel commissoned by the United States Department of Energy. From 1994-96 he was principal investigator for a study of least-cost regional transportation solutions funded by the Bullitt Foundation, Energy Foundation, and the Cascade Bicycle Club. Papers describing this work have been published in the Research Record of the Transportation Research Board, National Academy of Sciences, and the Proceedings of the 1996 Vancouver OECD International Conference on Sustainable Transport.

Since 1998, he has been collaborating with John Niles on a long-term study of the relationships between transit-oriented development and the dynamics of consumer markets and retail industry decision-making. He is Senior Fellow for Urban Growth and Transportation at Center for the New West. He is a Research Associate at the Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies at San Jose State University.

Dick Nelson received a B.S. (Engineering) from the University of Washington and a Sc.D. (Materials Science/Physics) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dick represented the Ballard-Wallingford area as a Washington State Representative from 1977 to 1992. In that capacity he chaired the Energy and Utilities committee and the Housing committee. He also served on the Transportation, Revenue and Natural Resources committees. Dick was a co-sponsor of the Growth Management Act and legislation establishing the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority.

Contact Information:

E-Mail: dicknels@email.msn.com
phone/fax (206) 781-0915

Jerry Schneider

Jerry Schneider is Professor Emertius of Civil Engineering and Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington in Seattle. For several years, he also held an adjunct appointment in Environmental Studies at the UW. He taught courses in urban-regional planning and land-use/transportation planning at the University for 30 years and has only recently retired. In the Transportation Systems Program in Civil Engineering, he has been the principal investigator for many research projects, most dealing with some aspect of planning and operating urban transit systems. He has published more than 50 papers on various topics that deal with urban transportation concepts and methods.

At present, he is the Vice-President of the Advanced Transit Association, headquartered in Washington, D.C. He has been an active participant in the activities of the Transportation Research Board (National Academy of Sciences and Engineering) and has both chaired and served on several TRB committees during the past three decades. Outside of the UW, he has served as a board member of the Washington Environmental Council.

Contact information:

E-mail: jbs@peak.org
Phone (541) 758-2045
Mail address: 2255 NW Estaview Circle, Corvallis, OR 97330

Contributing Editor

James W. MacIsaac, P.E.

Jim MacIsaac has been involved in transportation planning for the Puget Sound region since 1965, beginning with the Puget Sound Regional Transportation Study (PSRTS).. He holds a BSCE degree from Seattle University, 1964, and MSCE (Transportation) from University of Washington in 1965. After four years with the PSRTS and PSRC, he moved into consulting practice with large transportation engineering firms. From 1975 to 1995 he served as CEO of The Transpo Group which he co-founded. Since 1995 he has entered into a private consulting practice focusing upon regional planning and land development projects. In 1996 he was honored by the Washington State Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers with its Outstanding Career Achievement award.

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Last modified: October 21, 2012