Study Committee Biographical Information
German Gilbert, Chair, is Head of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Oklahoma State University, where he is also Director of the Oklahoma Transportation Center. He was previously Director of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University and on the faculty of the City and Regional Planning Department at the University of North Carolina. From 1989 to 1990 he was President of Taxi Systems, Inc., and from 1986 to 1989 he was Chairman of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Executive Committee. He earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Northwestern University.
J.Barry Barker is Executive Director of the Transit Authority of River City in Louisville, Kentucky. He was previously General Manager at Metro in Akron, Ohio, and Assistant General Manager for Marketing and Management for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. He is a member of the Projects Oversight and Selection Committee for the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) and has served on several other TCRP panels. He earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Case Western Reserve University and master’s degree in public administration from Cleveland State University.
Santo A.Grande is Executive Director of Delmarva Community Services, a position he has held since 1975. He is responsible for administering the local service delivery system in Dorchester
County, Maryland, including the provision of public transportation services. He is past President of the Transportation Association of Maryland and Maryland Delegate to the Community Transportation Association of America, and a member of the Maryland Association of Community Services. He earned his master’s degree in human resource management from Wilmington College.
Clarence W.Marsella, Jr., is General Manager of the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD). RTD serves more than 2 million people and operates a light rail system, 900 fixed-route buses, and 200 paratransit vehicles. RTD also has contracts with private operators for the services of more than 600 fixed-route and paratransit vehicles. Previously, Mr. Marsella was a co-owner of Gulf Coast Paratransit Services in Ft. Myers, Florida; Executive Director of the Florida Transit Operators Association; and Chief of Contracted Services for the Metro Dade Transit Agency. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public administration from the University of Connecticut.
James J.McLary is President of Southeast Transit Management, Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia. He was previously President of Transportation Management Services, which provides paratransit systems and turnkey management for public transit agencies. Before that, he was Executive Vice President of National Transit Services, Inc. He has also been a transit consultant and served for 8 years as Transit Administrator for the City of Madison, Wisconsin. He is on the Board of Directors of the Taxicab, Limousine, and Paratransit Association. He earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University.
Charles L.Pettus, Sr., is International Vice President and General Executive Board Member of the Amalgamated Transit Union. From 1980 to 1999 he was President of the union’s Baltimore local, where he was chief negotiator for collective agreements. He joined the Baltimore Transit Company (which preceded the Maryland Mass Transit Administration) as a bus operator in 1969. Since 1990 he has chaired the City of Baltimore’s Wage Commission. He was a member of TCRP’s Panel on International Transit Studies. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Baltimore.
Patrisha Piras is a transportation consultant specializing in public transit planning and evaluation and an elected member of the Board of Directors of AC Transit in Oakland, California. She was previously Director of Paratransit Planning
for Laidlaw Transit Services, Inc., and was a senior analyst with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission of the San Francisco Bay Area. She has served on several TRB committees, including the Committees on Social and Economic Factors in Transportation, Public Involvement in Transportation, and Accessible Transportation and Mobility. She earned her J.D. from Hastings College of the Law, University of California.
Elliott D.Sclar is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Affairs and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Planning at Columbia University. He is also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute; a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Transportation Development Policy; and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Trillium Asset Management, an investment advisory firm. He has studied and written extensively on privatization in public transportation, hospitals, and other fields and has advised several labor unions on privatization issues. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Tufts University.
Roger Tauss is National Coordinator for Government and Political Affairs for the Transport Workers Union of America, a position he has held since 1997. Previously he was the union’s international representative and president of the 5,600-member Local 234 in Philadelphia. He was Vice President of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor and Philadelphia Central Labor Council from 1984 to 1989. From 1975 to 1983 he was a bus driver for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority. He has taught political science at Bryn Mawr University and Northwestern University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Brian D.Taylor is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Associate Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His research centers on both transportation finance and travel demographics. His work on transportation finance has involved examining the politics of finance, including the influence of finance on the development of metropolitan freeway systems and the effect of public transit subsidy programs on both system performance and social equity. His finance research has also examined the effects of contracting for transit service on cost and performance. His research on travel demographics has emphasized access-deprived populations, including women, racial-ethnic minorities, the disabled, and the poor. He earned his Ph.D. in urban planning from UCLA.
Roger F.Teal is President of TWJ Consulting, a software consulting firm in Wilmette, Illinois. He previously taught in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He has authored and coauthored numerous articles and reports on transportation policy and public transportation, including the effects of privatization on transit service quality and efficiency. He was a member of TRB’s Paratransit Committee and served on the Strategic Transportation Research Study for Transit. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Tufts University.
Nigel H.M.Wilson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he specializes in public transportation service planning, transit operations management and control, and advanced technology applications to transport systems. He led the department’s Transportation Group from 1993 to 1996, and currently heads the Engineering Systems Group. He has written extensively on public transportation technology and planning and is former Chairman of the TRB Committee on Transit Management and Performance. He earned his Ph.D. in Transportation Systems from MIT.