Board of Directors

Jeral Poskey, emeritus ATRA Chairman, now works at Google. Jeral earned his MBA from Stanford University, focusing on entrepreneurship and specializing in the process of funding and managing startup businesses. He completed numerous projects on the commercialization of PRT, including the paper “TIFs, BIDs, and PRT: Applicability of Tax Increment Financing or Business Improvement Districts to Building Personal Rapid Transit.”

While Mr. Poskey brings project management expertise from his time in the private sector, he also brings important experience from his time in government. He was formerly a congressional aide in Washington DC, working for both the U.S. House and Senate, where he gained an understanding of how the public sector functions. It was during Jeral's time in Washington DC that he decided to aim his career at realizing the potential of personal rapid transit, enrolling at Stanford for an advanced degree that could help him achieve this goal.

Since then he has served on the board of directors of the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) for a number of years, becoming its youngest ever officer in January 2000.

Bob Dunning, An employee of the Boeing Company, supporting information systems in Seattle, Washington.

Bob is a long time advocate of advanced transit rather than atransportation professional.

He looks for opportunities to reapply the 25 years of experience he has accumulated in support of factory production systems - and may be one of the earliest people to use the phrase "lean transit". Just as "Lean" production systems are updating our factories and also updating our preconceptions about "mass production", "Lean" transit systems can update our existing transportation infrastructure, replacing our preconceptions about "mass transit".

Martin Lowson, ATRA Executive Committee, is founder and President of Advanced Transport Systems Ltd, responsible for developing the ULTra (Urban Light Transport) PRT system. He spent his previous career in the Aerospace industry, both in the US where he worked on the Apollo Space program and in the UK. He was Chief Scientist and Director of Corporate Development for Westland Helicopters and then Sir George White Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol. He is a co-patⁱentee for the rotor system which has held the world absolute speed record for helicopters since 1986. His Undergraduate and Doctoral study was at the University of Southampton, England. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1991. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Acoustical Society of America and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Stan Young, President of ATRA, is currently with the University of Maryland. He has worked for the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) in since 1994 in various capacities including transportation planning, pavement management, information systems management, and research. In 2000, he established an Advanced Technology Research program, which he continues to lead. The research program investigates various topics related to Intelligent Transportation Systems, instrumentation, communications, and data analysis for application within the highway industry.

Prior to joining KDOT, he worked at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Maryland. During his tenure at JHUAPL he became involved in the lab's earliest efforts into Intelligent Transportation Systems. These projects included an automated crash notification system, known as the Mayday system, and detection of impaired driving by analysis of driver control signatures.

Dr. Young served in the United States Peace Corp from 1989 to 1990 in Cameroon, South Africa. He holds a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas. He earned both his Masters and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University.

Dr. Young and been involved in Advanced Transit study for many years. His primary interests lie in automated mobility science, particularly in the application of modern technology to enhance mobility across the full spectrum of society so as to enhance the standard of living for current and future generations.

Wayne D. Cottrell, Ph.D., ATRA Secretary, possesses B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, a Civil Engineer’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in transportation engineering from the University of Utah. Dr. Cottrell is licensed as a professional traffic engineer in California. Professor Cottrell was recently an Associate Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He has worked for engineering consulting firms and the Federal Highway Administration, and has taught at San Joaquin Valley College and the University of Utah. He is active in several professional organizations, including the Transportation Research Board, in which he is currently serving as the Chair of the Committee on Major Activity Center Circulation Systems. Dr. Cottrell has conducted and published research in motor vehicle safety, pedestrian safety, freeway congestion measurement, construction project scheduling, motor vehicle emissions, transportation education, and driverless transit.

Lawrence J. Fabian, Events Coordinator, is an innovative regional land use and transportation planner, writer, thinker and visionary. His professional career has been international and progressive. He possesses world-level information on automated people movers (APMs) and APM-based strategies to better configure land use and sustainable density.

Mr. Fabian is the founder and principal of Trans.21, a technical clearinghouse on world APM developments. He is an office holder in the American Planning Association (APA) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He is also treasurer of the Advanced Transit Association and active in the U.S. Transportation Research Board (TRB).

Mr. Fabian graduated from Dartmouth College summa cum laude in 1967. He holds a Masters in City & Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and has over thirty years of experience in both private consultancies and the public sector. Benefiting from service as a Peace Corps Volunteer, he is fluent in French and Persian and comfortable in most cultural and multi-disciplinary settings.

With wife and children, he lives in Boston where he walks its lovely tree-lined streets.

Will Ackel, is a computer programmer specializing in 3D computer graphics and animation, computer network simulation, and solar-thermal modeling. He is also an expert in solid geometry. Growing up in Los Angeles, Will witnessed how, with the construction of each new freeway, the quality of mobility decline, along with the air quality, the natural environment, and the sense of community. He then escaped to San Diego where he saw the whole sad story repeated.

Now living in northern California, Will gets around on a Segway.

J. Edward Anderson, For 23 years Dr. Anderson was a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota where he worked on the theory and application of PRT systems since 1968. He chaired four international conferences on PRT, lectured and gave courses widely in the U. S. and abroad on transit systems analysis and design, authored the textbook Transit Systems Theory , has published frequently in the Journal of Advanced Transportation and elsewhere. He has been a member of the ATRA Board of Directors since its founding in 1976, and was its first President. In 1981 he initiated the design of a new PRT system. In 1986 he moved to Boston University as a Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and formed an industry team with members from five Boston-Area companies to carry his PRT design to the point that in 1989 it attracted the attention of the Chicago RTA and Raytheon Company. In 1994 he moved back to the Minneapolis area where he has continued to work to commercialize his system, currently through PRT International, LLC. In his early career he worked for 12 years at the Honeywell Aeronautical Division on instrument design, autopilots, inertial navigation, and spacecraft development; and previously two years as an Aeronautical Research Scientist in the Structures Research Division, NASA, Langley Field, VA. He has a Ph.D. from M. I. T. in Astronautics, a MSME from the University of Minnesota, and a BSME from Iowa State University. He is a registered professional engineer, was named Outstanding Inventor of 1989 for his patents on PRT, and is a Fellow of the AAAS, cited for his work on PRT.

Ingmar Andreasson, PhD., ATRA Vice President, Former marketing & sales director for Volvo Bus, President for Volvo Transportation Systems, Reseach Director, Advanced Transit Systems at Chalmers University, co-founder of LogistikCentrum. Currently Adjunct Professor in Transport and Logistics and Director for the Centre for Traffic Research at the Royal Inst of Technology in Stockholm Sweden.

Richard Arthur has thirty years of experience in all facets of the transportation industry having worked as an Executive Assistant to the Director of Planning and Budget for the New York City Transit Authority where he was the principal author of the first five year capital plan to “Restore the System to a State of Good Repair”. That program largely credited with saving the NYCTA subway system. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Transportation for the NYS Department of Transportation. More recently Mr. Arthur has devoted his life to the development of Automated Transit technologies as a former President of CyberTran International and CyberTran Development.

Daniel Brand, (now retired) Vice President of Charles River Associates Incorporated. He has served as Undersecretary of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, Associate Professor at Harvard University, and Senior Lecturer at MIT. He was a member of four National Research Council committees (High-Speed Surface Transportation, Small Aircraft Transportation Systems, Advanced Vehicle and Highway Technologies, and Maritime Industries R&D). He has also chaired three TRB standing committees (Passenger Travel Demand Forecasting, Intelligent Transportation Systems [ITS], and New Transportation Systems and Technology). He was a founding member of the Coordinating Council of ITS America and serves on three of its technical advisory committees. He was editor of Urban Transportation Innovation, coeditor of Urban Travel Demand Forecasting, and the author of numerous monographs and articles on transportation. He was the conference summary speaker and summary paper author at two of the most important recent national transportation planning and policy conferences in America‹post-ISTEA, Moving Urban America, the Charlotte Conference, TRB Special Report 237 (1993), and pre-ISTEA, the TRB 2020 Conference, TRB Special Report 220 (1988). His paper, "Theory and Method in Land Use and Travel Forecasting," received the Best Paper Award in Planning and Administration at a TRB annual meeting.

Marsden Burger, Mr. Burger is Chairman and CEO of Cabintaxi Corporation in Detroit. He has over 30 years of experience in the application of advanced transportation technology. He has three times held positions responsible for the United States for marketing advanced transportation systems. He has been involved in the planning of transit projects from the system supplying side in over 100 cities in five countries, and has been a member of the development team on six different advanced transportation systems. He was involved in the building of the Detroit People Mover, and later was in charge of its operation for two years. He holds a Masters Degree from Kent State University with a major in Urban and Transportation Geography, specializing in the application of advanced transportation systems. His Masters thesis (completed in 1978) dealt with the application of high speed Maglev systems. In the field of advanced transportation systems, Mr. Burger has been employed by, or done consulting work for, the following organizations: the Chicago Department of Public Works, Mannesmann in Germany, Messerschmitt in Germany, Urban Transportation Development Corporation in Canada and the United States, Cabintaxi Corporation in Detroit, Magnetic Transit of America in Los Angeles, Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston, Siemens Transportation Corporation in New York, AEG-Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, the Detroit Transportation Corporation, the City of Detroit, the United States Federal Railroad Administration.

Catherine G. Burke, PhD. Associate Professor, School of Policy, Planning and Development; University of Southern California. Author: Innovation and Public Policy: The Case of Personal Rapid Transit.

Mike Conwell is a computer programmer and activist in Austin, Texas. He joined Computer
Consulting Company in 2000, tasked with designing and providing infrastructure for corporate websites and intranets. Over his 25 year career in workplace automation and bookkeeping, he has developed an enthusiasm and expertise for working with large databases.

A co-founder of Austin Citizens for Personal Rapid Transit (ACPRT), Mr. Conwell has been active in transportation issues in Austin since 2000. An active member of the ATRA board since 2004, he has provided logistics and equipment for our booth at conferences and trade shows as part of our drive to expand membership.

Other efforts include serving on the Board of the Southwest Family YMCA of Austin. He helped to have the wrongful conviction of Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Connecticut, overturned in 2008.

Most recently, Mr. Conwell has worked to highlight shortcomings in Texas state election law and procedures that result in 2% of Texas voters being erroneously removed from voter rolls every two years. A bill (81R-SB1867) created as a result of his research and testimony to the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs passed the Texas Senate and a House subcommittee without opposition.

Donn Fichter, BSME, MSCE. '57 published PRT concept; '64 book on PRT feasibility; '68 PRT description (HRR 251);'73 Veyar: Small Cars as the Key to Urban PRT (PRT II, U. of Minn.)

Bill Flanigan, Database Programmer and Computer Consultant, Carbondale, Colorado. Born in New York City and majored in Electrical Engineering at the University of Vermont. His professional experience includes co-organizer of New Visions in Transportation, held in Aspen, Colorado in October 2000; business management at IRT Environment, an energy efficiency consulting firm based formerly in Basalt, Colorado; applied physics at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York; radio broadcasting; audio engineering and computer programming.

Ian Ford is a Transportation activist living in Albuquerque, NM

George Haikalis is a civil engineer and transportation planner. He is President of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, Inc., a NYC-based not-for-profit corporation concerned with reducing car use in dense urban areas. Haikalis was with the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission for 19 years, serving as it Research Director. While at Tri-State, Haikalis oversaw advanced transit efforts, including accelerating moving walkways and PRT. He is currently co-chair of vision42 - an initiative to create an auto-free light railⁱ boulevard on 42nd Street. Haikalis is Chair of the Research Subcommittee of Transportation Research Board's Committee on Intercity Rail Passenger Systems.

Jarold (Jerry) Kieffer, Birthplace: Minneapolis, MN.; founding member and former treasurer, secretary, and chairman, Advanced Transit Association (1976); life time member of ATRA and member of Board of Directors; U.S. Army 1942-1946 (overseas service: South Pacific); Ph. D. University of Minnesota (1950); former U.S. government official; professor and administrator (University of Oregon); transportation consultant and writer; and foundation executive. Chairman,, Senior Employment Resources; chairman; Fairfax Alliance for Human Services President and Publisher-Kieffer Publications.

Dennis Manning, Born 1940 in Boise, Idaho. Moved to Los Angeles area in 1942, then to Fresno, CA 1951. Received BSME at Fresno State College 1963. Married 1972. Two children ages 29 and 25. Began career with California Department of Transportation as Jr. Civil Engineer. Worked mostly in Design and Construction. Switched to Transportation Planning 4 years prior to retirement in 1998. Side endeavors included 25 years as small hotel owner-operator, and developer. PRT epiphany occurred in 1967 while observing expressway traffic. Basic thought was that 400 feet of r/w was being used to move 2 foot wide people. Began active PRT involvement in 1994 as the result of email access. Joined ATRA in 1995. Served 3 years as Secretary/Treasurer, and 2 years as President. Did minor work with ASCE APM committee. I've read, attended and participated in conferences/workshops, done some writing, exchanged a few thousand e-mails, helped form CPRT-Umunum chapter in Santa Cruz, California. Currently building support for PRT in Fresno, California, and remain on ATRA's Board of Directors.

David Maymudes, David Maymudes is a former Microsoft software engineer who has been working on PRT control system and simulation software since 2001. In addition to his work with Taxi 2000, David also works on other aspects of PRT with Cities21, SoundPRT, and ATRA.

Steve Raney is founder of Cities21.org, a nonprofit that researches advanced transit, TDM (transportation demand management), and land use for suburban edge cities (Palo Alto, Emeryville, Pleasanton, Edina, Redmond). He holds three masters: business, software, and transportation from Columbia, RPI, and Berkeley. He is the Principal Investigator on EPA's "Transforming Office Parks into Transit Villages" study of Hacienda Business Park. He has conducted technology product research at Microsoft, Citigroup, and Silicon Valley start-ups. He was project manager for BART's Group Rapid Transit study. He designed a version of Cybertran's Group Rapid Transit control system. He is the author of five Transportation Research Board (TRB) papers. His "wireless carpool assistant," TrakRide, is patent pending. He served as Training Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity. His recent conference presentations include TRB, Association for Commuter Transportation, Going!, Engineers for a Sustainable World, and Rail~Volution.

Tom Richert is a senior project manager working in a client executive capacity for the Linbeck Group’s New England office. In his role he provides the executive teams, organizational boards, and investment managers that represent his Clients’ projects with the tools they need to more effectively lead successful projects. Past project management work includes campus development at Groton School and Middlesex School in the Boston metropolitan area, and a multi-billion dollar enhancement of the City of San Diego’s wastewater system. Current work includes the development of a real estate based entertainment complex and the delivery of project stewardship coaching programs.

Jerry Schneider, Professor Emeritus, jointly appointed in the Departments of Urban Design and Planning and Civil Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Degrees include a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. Conducted numerous research projects on various transit issues with funding from the Urban Mass Transit Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration and taught numerous urban transportation subjects at the graduate level for 30 years. Has published several articles on urban transportation topics in leading academic journals. Active in various TRB committees, has made numerous TRB presentations, founder and chair of the TRB Interactive Computer Graphics Committee. Has served as VP of the Advanced Transit Association. Has created and managed a large website focused on Innovative Transportation Technologies during the past decade. More than 100 systems from around the world are reviewed, monitored and discussed and historical articles as well as current readings are provided at http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans

Joerg Schweizer, graduated 1993 at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany in Electrical Engineer. During his studies he specialized in systems- and control theory. From 1993 to 1994 he has performed research in the field of complex, non-linear system, at University College Dublin, Ireland.

In 1999 he obtained his PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. His research interest has been the application of nonlinear system theory to coding for broad band communication. During his PhD he helped with teaching on the subject of numerical simulation tools for linear and nonlinear systems.

In 1996 he worked for three months as an invited researcher at the University of California, Berkeley on the communication of non-linear, Bio-inspired neural networks. In 1999 he worked as an independent consultant for a German company where he has conducted the prototyping of an ultra-sonic distance-and angle-meter. From 2002-2003 he organized the set-up of a Bionics laboratory at the National Microelectronics Research Center (NMRC) in Cork, Ireland. His main activity at the NMRC has been the development of the computer interface for a FET-sensor array in order to measure electro-chemical signals from individual neurons.

In the year 2000 he started developing a microsimulatior for Personal Rapid Transit networks. He has also been founding member of the civil organization Modular Automated Individual Transport, MAIT international e.V.

Since 2003 he has been working at the civil engineering department of the University of Bologna, Italy, where he developed a novel measurement and control-technology for PRT. He also continued the development of his PRT microsimulator and has been involved in several PRT planning projects.

In 2006 Joerg Schweizer became a full time researcher in the academic field of transportation engineering. He currently runs an international master course in Sustainable Transportation Engineering.

Roxanne Warren is an architect and author, and Chair of vision42, a proposal to convert Manhattan's 42nd Street into a landscaped, auto-free light rail boulevard — an initiative co-founded with George Haikalis in 1999. Her 33 years of architectural experience includes 21 years as principal of her own firm, where she has designed projects for both private and public clients, including two large projects for NYC Transit. Ms. Warren’s writing includes a book, The Urban Oasis: Guideways and Greenways in the Human Environment (McGraw-Hill, 1997), and a number of articles on urban transportation and land use published in professional journals. She is a member of the Planning and Urban Design Committee of the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Major Activity Center Circulation Systems Committee of the Transportation Research Board, and a Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design. Ms. Warren has been active over three decades in research and writing on transportation/land use issues, and has been a speaker and moderator at conference seminars on the subject in the U.S. and Europe. Work on vision42 has included public outreach, with over 220 presentations of the proposal, and the commissioning, oversight and coordination of three consultants on technical studies of its traffic implications, costs and economic potential.

William Wilde, "I grew up in Atlanta and got my Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech in 1963, having worked as a Co-op student at Lockheed. After a tour with the U.S. Army in Europe I returned to Lockheed as an Aircraft Design Engineer. During my long commutes to work I began to envision an alternative (which we call PRT) to dependence on the automobile. It came from thinking about inputs and outputs and how incredibly inefficient the automobile/roadway/parking system is. I then became aware of some of the early thinking about PRT and wanted to be a
part of it. I went to the U. of Maryland for my Masters degree in Civil Engineering with a focus on transportation. At the 1973 PRT Conference in Minneapolis I learned of the Denver RTD's plan to build a PRT network and joined the staff as a transportation planner. Unfortunately RTD's plans degraded into buses and light rail but I stayed in the industry in various roles on a variety of urban transportation projects. My commitment to PRT has remained constant since those first visions decades ago. It amazes me that after all this time and effort we are still trying to get PRT into the mix of available technologies. Someday, I'm convinced, PRT will be as natural to people as breathing."

Tad Winiecki was educated at Grinnell College (BA in Physics) and Rice University (MS in Space Science). He has five U.S. patents on motorcycle safety inventions and is registered as a Professional Engineer in Colorado. His main gift is solving difficult problems by the application of science, engineering and economics.
After a career in the space industry Tad started his own private service business and began working on Doug Malewicki's PeoplePods personal rapid transit system. He is currently designing the Higherway system of personal automated transport (see http://higherway.us).

Chan Wirasinghe obtained his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1968. Subsequently he won a full US Fulbright Scholarship to study transportation engineering at the University of California at Berkeley where he completed his M.S. in 1973 and Ph.D. in 1976. He moved to the University of Calgary 1976 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering.

Dr. Wirasinghe became the founding Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Engineering at U of C in 1988 and was one of the originators of the successful Research Chairs and Professorships Program with over 25 currently in place. He became Dean of the Faculty of Engineering in 1994. He Chaired the National Council of Deans of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 1999/2000 and is now the senior Dean of Engineering in Canada. Dr.Wirasinghe is the Grantholder for NSERC Canadian Design Engineering Network (C-DEN). Under his leadership, the Faculty of Engineering at U of C has essentially doubled in size and quadrupled its research funds. It leads the U of C in post graduate education. The U of C has won many national awards for women in engineering activities and has the most women faculty of any Engineering School in Canada.

Chan Wirasinghe’s research is on airport and public transport systems. He has over 100 refereed publications and 100 citations to his credit. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Advanced Transportation.

Chan Wirasinghe is married to Dhamitha Wirasinghe, has three adult daughters, and two grand children. He is an amateur Mozart historian, a collector of books on Sri Lanka, and reads for relaxation.

Supin Yoder has over 16 years of experience in transportation planning and travel demand modeling experience that has been gained both in the consulting world and the public sector. Currently, she is Planning Modeling Specialist with Federal Highway Administration. Before Joining FHWA, she was a Senior Transportation Modeler with Wilbur Smith Associates in their Chicago office. In this position, she served as a project manager for many multi-modal projects including highway, transit, freight and airport ground access, and multi-jurisdictional projects encompassing statewide, MPO, county and corridor model development and applications. Prior to her time at Wilbur Smith for four years, she worked as a principal modeler with the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in Chicago for 11 years where she was responsible for the calibration, validation and application of RTA's travel model. In addition, she has done project-based consulting for Bechtel on a commuter railⁱ project in Hong Kong and high speed rail study in Taiwan.

She received Institute of Transportation Engineer (ITE) Transportation Planning Council’s Best Practices Award twice, one was in 1999 while she worked at the Chicago RTA and the other was in 2003 while at Wilbur Smith Associates. She has also published numerous papers in the transportation field, including one on asset management in the September 2003 issue of the ITE Journal and Capital Costs and Ridership Estimates of Personal rapid Transit.