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Consultants to the transit industry |
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KFH
Group Staff Elizabeth (Buffy) Ellis, AICP Senior
Transportation Planner Elizabeth (Buffy) Ellis is a specialist
in paratransit and transit planning and system design, needs assessment,
performance evaluation, and data reporting and monitoring. Beginning her career in 1978, she has
managed numerous consulting projects for public, non-profit, and private
agencies. She is currently serving as
Chair of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Committee on Paratransit,
among other professional activities.
Ms. Ellis earned a Master of Regional Planning from the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in Geography and Fine Arts, Magna
Cum Laude, from Boston University. She
is member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). Selected Experience Paratransit and Transit Services: Ms. Ellis brings a hands-on understanding of
the day-to-day issues of transportation services, having spent 18 years with
a major private contractor in California, where among many projects, she
supported the company’s contract managers across the country on service and
planning issues, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, and
federal National Transit Database reporting.
Her current work includes several projects for the Maryland Transit
Administration (MTA), including an assessment of the MTA’s same-day taxi
service. Ms. Ellis has managed many
planning studies, including a Transportation Development Plan (TDP) for
Dorchester County, Maryland. Other
planning work includes more than 25 planning studies in California, Arizona,
Colorado, Maryland, and Virginia. ADA Paratransit: Among recent projects, Ms. Ellis served as
the Expert Witness for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s
(WMATA) Office of General Counsel in litigation concerning WMATA’s ADA
paratransit program. She served as
task leader for an ADA Paratransit Growth Management study for the Orange
County Transit Authority, California.
Ms. Ellis was appointed by the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania to
serve as Special Master in a class action regarding Philadelphia’s (SEPTA)
ADA paratransit service, providing technical expertise for litigation
involving data reliability and service performance. She is a senior advisor for a current
project for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments that is
developing a methodology to assess pathways for frequent origin-destination
pairs of WMATA’s ADA paratransit riders.
In 2004, Ms. Ellis was KFH Group’s lead consultant on a study of ADA
paratransit and specialized transportation coordination for WMATA, focusing
on improving cost-effectiveness of specialized services in the region. During the earlier years of the ADA, Ms.
Ellis developed ADA plans for various entities, including WMATA and several
California cities, designing a supplemental taxi service for the San Mateo
County Transit District and assisting WMATA implementing in-person functional
assessments. Specialized and Community Transportation: Ms. Ellis is currently managing a project
to develop a centralized transportation information service for a large
suburban county in the Washington metropolitan region. She was a subcontractor for a recent study
of senior transportation needs in Northern Virginia, which included a random
telephone survey of 1,800 older seniors to assess their transportation
needs. A unique aspect of this study
assessed the relationship between land use type and seniors’ mobility. Other community projects include
scheduling/dispatch studies for a human service agency in Pasadena, two
private hospitals in Los Angeles, and the San Diego Red Cross, as well as
improvement studies for several cities in Los Angeles County. Paratransit and Transit Data Monitoring: Ms. Ellis authored the section on
demand-responsive transportation service for the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, TCRP Report 100,
which provides practitioners a consistent set of techniques for evaluating
service quality and capacity. She
managed a project to design a standardized monthly reporting process for the
MTA’s Transit Operations Division, composed of 11 different departments
including rail, bus, and paratransit.
Ms. Ellis has supported the MTA Office of Statewide Planning’s recent
expansion of the state’s performance monitoring program, developing new
performance measures and revising standards.
Prior work includes that as a team leader on a study that assessed the
feasibility and designed procedures for collecting transportation operating
and financial data from social service agencies in Southern California. Paratransit and Transit Research: Ms. Ellis’s extensive national-level project
experience includes: · Principal
Investigator for TCRP Project B-31, resulting in TCRP Report 124: Guidebook for Measuring, Assessing, and
Improving Performance of Demand-Response Transportation (phase two of
this project is underway, focusing on rural services) · Assistant Principal
Investigator for TCRP Project B-34, Guidebook for Commingling ADA-Eligible and
Other Passengers on ADA-Complementary Paratransit Services (underway) · Author of demand
responsive sections of TCRP
Report 100: Transit Capacity and
Quality of Service Manual, developed under TCRP Project A-15A · A primary author of
TCRP Report 70: Guidebook for Change and Innovation at
Rural and Small Urban Transit Systems, developed under TCRP Project
A-21 · Team leader for
TCRP Project G-5, resulting in TCRP Report 54: Transit Manager Tool Kit for Rural and
Small Urban Transportation Systems · Author of the
User’s Guide for the computerized model developed through TCRP Project B-14, resulting in TCRP Report 61: Analyzing the Costs of Operating Small
Transit Vehicles · Lead consultant on
NCHRP Project 20-65 Task 3, Availability and Accessibility of Liability and Excess Insurance for
Public Transit and Private Coach Operators, published as NCRHP Research
Results Digest 295. |
Education ·
MRP Regional
Planning, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ·
B.A. Geography and
Fine Arts, Magna Cum Laude, Boston University Previous Positions ·
Consulting Manager,
Laidlaw Transit Services, Inc. ·
Manager of
Consulting, DAVE Transportation Services, Inc. ·
Consultant, Peat,
Marwick, Mitchell & Company ·
Consultant, DAVE
Systems, Inc. ·
Planning Intern,
Southern California Association of Governments |
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