Founding Principal
In Memoriam- Joseph Kott, PhD, AICP, PTP
Joseph Kott was a certified urban planner and transportation planner specializing in planning for sustainable transportation for livable communities. He held a B.A. from Wayne State University in Detroit, a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, master’s degrees in both transport planning and traffic engineering from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a Ph.D. in transport planning from Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
Joe had over fory years experience in transport planning at the local, regional, and state geographic scales for public agencies as well as private consultancies. He had been an adjunct faculty member within the Stanford Program on Urban Studies for over seven years and was also an adjunct faculty member at the Muskie School for Public Service at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.
Joe had authored or co-authored papers on a variety of topics, including urban transportation planning for sustainability, design and assessment of sustainable arterial streets, early deployment intelligent transportation systems planning, traffic calming, and the importance of transportation and traffic in assessment of community quality of life.
Founding Principal
Michelle DeRobertis, P.E.
Michelle DeRobertis is a licensed Traffic and Civil Engineer in California specializing in bicycle, pedestrian and sustainable transportation issues. She holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering and a M.S. in Transportation Engineering, both from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2019 she received her PhD from the University of Brescia Italy.
Michelle was a transportation engineering consultant for over twenty years managing nonmotorized and traffic calming projects in California as well as in Charlotte NC, Chicago IL and Lima Peru.
She is an Instructor for U.C. Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies Technology Transfer Program and has guest lectured graduate courses at UC Berkeley and CSU San Jose in City and Regional Planning. She served on the Bicycle Technical Committee which advises the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. She received a fellowship from the German Marshall Fund to study TOD and land use in Italy and Germany in 2009. Publications are:
- Land Development and Transportation Policies for Transit-Oriented Development in Germany and Italy – Five Case Studies, German Marshal Fund Policy Brief, 2010
- Trail Planning in California, Solano Press, 2009, Co-author of Chapter 5: Design
- Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering, 16th Edition, 2007; Author of Chapter 21: Bicycle Facilities
- Buses and Bicycles: Design OptionsFor Sharing The Road, ITE Journal, May 2001
Founding Principal
John Eells, M.C.P.
John Eells is a transportation planner with 34 years of experience preparing comprehensive transportation plans and developing sustainable transportation projects at the local and regional level. John’s experience includes 2 years in the Legislative Analyst Office in the California State Legislature, 5 years with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), 7 years as the Transportation Planning Coordinator for Marin County and 20 years as a consultant.
He holds a Bachelors Degree in Architecture and a Masters Degree in City Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. John has assisted in the preparation of Regional Transportation Plans for Sacramento and Lake Tahoe and reviewed Regional Transportation Plans throughout California for conformance with State greenhouse gas reduction requirements for the California Attorney General’s Office.
He participated in a joint effort by Caltrans and the California Council on Science and Technology to develop a proposal for a new California Center for Transportation Innovation to coordinate transportation research activities in California.
John has also managed major multi-modal transportation studies, evaluated the feasibility of proposal ferry services, and worked on the implementation of several rail transit projects including the Sacramento Light Rail project, the ACE Commuter Rail Service from Stockton to San Jose, the SMART Commuter Rail Service from Cloverdale to Larkspur, proposed AMTRAK service from Oakland to Reno, and the proposed high speed Maglev Service from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Principal
Richard W. Lee, PhD, AICP
Richard (Rick) Lee is a certified planner, transportation consultant and academic with a longstanding and wide-ranging interest in sustainable transport and human-scale cities. He has over 30 years of diverse experience in transportation and urban planning. His consulting experience includes management of regional transportation plans, general plans, rail and bus transit projects, smart growth transportation studies, and a wide variety of traffic forecast studies. His fundamental career aim is to integrate the best academic research into the practice of transportation planning.
He holds a Ph.D. in City & Regional Planning as well as master’s degrees in both city planning and civil engineering from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and a BA (History) from Carleton College. He has taught transportation planning and led major research projects at several universities, including Massey University in New Zealand (where he lived from 1995 – 1998), UC Berkeley, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, UC-Davis, UCLA and San José State University (his current appointment). He is a Mineta Institute Research Associate and serves as an advisor to TransForm’s GreenTrip certification program.
He has authored or co-authored dozens of professional and academic publications, including Sustainable Transportation Indicators for California, Mineta Transportation Institute (2004), and “Smart Growth Parking Requirements Review,” ITE Journal, December, 2010.
Principal
Christopher E. Ferrell, Ph.D.
Dr. Ferrell began his career in 1995 as a planner for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).
He completed his doctoral studies in City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley in 2005 and worked as a consultant with Dowling Associates, Inc. for 10 years before leaving to help form CFA Consultants in 2010. He has been the principal investigator for five research projects for the Mineta Transportation Institute, where he has been a Research Associate since 2005. His research focuses on the relationships between transportation and land use, livability, travel behavior, transportation policy and planning-related institutional structures.
His research experience includes the study of multimodal transit and freeway corridors, the best practices for building successful transit-oriented development, the effects of transit-oriented development on surrounding property values, the effects of neighborhood crimes on transportation mode choice, and a set of methods, metrics and strategies for evaluating transit corridor livability.
As a practitioner, he has planned mixed-use, infill and transit-oriented development projects, analyzed the impacts of specific and general plans, planned and implemented intelligent transportation systems, and developed bicycle and pedestrian plans. He has taught several quantitative methods classes in the San Jose State University Urban Planning Department and a course in transportation and land use in the City and Regional Planning Department at the University of California at Berkeley.