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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, and
performance evaluation. Beginning her
career in 1978, she has managed numerous consulting projects for public 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 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 was a senior advisor for a project for
the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments that developed 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. Her current work includes
several projects for the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA), including
support in the revision of ADA rider policies. Taxis:
Ms. Ellis’s current taxi projects include assistance to the Metropolitan
Washington Council of Governments (COG) with implementation of wheelchair
accessible taxis for the Nation’s Capital.
Among a wide range of tasks, Ms. Ellis drafted contract requirements
for the taxi companies awarded accessible taxi vehicles through the federal
New Freedom grant program and designed data collection protocols. She is also assisting the Maryland Transit
Administration (MTA) implement a pilot service for ADA eligible riders to use
taxis for dialysis transportation. Ms.
Ellis served as a senior consultant on KFH’s recent study in Boise, ID to
introduce wheelchair accessible taxis.
Additionally, Ms. Ellis was selected by the Taxi, Limousine, and
Paratransit Association (TLPA) as one of several on-call technical experts to
assist the private, for-hire TLPA member companies with issues related to
local and state transportation planning processes. Specialized and Community Transportation: Ms. Ellis managed 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. She
was recently engaged by AARP’s Public Policy Institute (PPI) to support its
efforts to inform policy debate on FTA’s three specialized transportation
funding programs (S. 5310, JARC and New Freedom) during reauthorization of
the federal surface transportation bill.
Ms. Ellis prepared four background papers for a two-day “roundtable”
conference of invited stakeholders to discuss the programs’ reauthorization
and, following the conference, prepared a final paper in collaboration with
PPI staff titled Policy
Options to Improve Specialized Transportation. 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 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.
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. Paratransit and Transit Research: Ms. Ellis’s extensive national-level project
experience includes: · Principal
Investigator for TCRP Project B-31, resulting in two guidebooks: TCRP Report 124 - Guidebook for Measuring, Assessing, and
Improving Performance of Demand-Response Transportation and TCRP
136 - Guidebook for Rural
Demand-Response Transportation: Measuring,
Assessing and Improving Performance · Assistant Principal
Investigator for TCRP Project B-34, Guidebook for Commingling ADA-Eligible and
Other Passengers on ADA-Complementary Paratransit Services (currently in
publication) · 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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