Miles Devine

Stantec

Longwood Medical Association Bus Study (Boston, Massachusetts)

Miles Devine, PE, PTOE is a Traffic Engineer for Stantec based out of their Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office. He will be presenting on a study done to test multiple bus route configurations through an urban medical campus and the how the different modes and variables were modeled.

Han Zheng

HDR

A Practical Method for OD-Based Volume Development Using PTV Visum

Han Zheng is a Traffic Engineer based in Bellevue, Washington, and a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in both Georgia and Washington. He has worked extensively on traffic forecasting and simulation for large corridor planning projects, with experience using probe data to support volume development and model calibration.

Noah Leonard & Kelsey Lindberg

SRF Consulting

Optimizing Alternative Analyses:  A Scenario Manager Workflow

SRF had the opportunity to collaborate with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) in conducting a corridor study along US 51 (N Stoughton Road) in Madison, WI. As a connecting highway, US 51 provides varying roadway environments, ranging from tight urban conditions to six-lane divided freeway conditions. This study required the SRF team to conduct a multitude of alternative analyses within PTV Vissim, leading the team to investigate the use of the scenario manager to complete this analysis, as WisDOT wanted to analyze how the US 51 corridor operated with varying combinations of intersection alternatives.

The SRF team will demonstrate how we implemented the scenario manager into our microsimulation modeling workflow, allowing us to create unique geometric and attribute modeling conditions on the fly, better serving our clients' needs while providing the same high-level, detailed analysis as conventional modeling workflows without sacrificing significant production time.

Mike Seely, P.E.

Horrocks

Connected, Automated, and Autonomous Vehicles:  Methodologies & Analysis

Mike has over 27 years of experience working on civil engineering projects emphasizing in traffic operations and rail safety.  During the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, Michael supervised regional traffic operations for the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), coordinating traffic flows to and from venues in the Salt Lake valley.   He also served as the UDOT Chief Railroad Engineer and was responsible for inspection and oversight of all public railroad crossings in Utah.  

Mike joined Horrocks in 2006 and is currently a Senior Traffic Engineer and Practice Lead.  He has developed numerous traffic operations models using Vissim, ranging from roundabouts to freeways to copper mines.  He recently completed the PTV Certified Trainer Program in July and is qualified for professional training on the Vissim and VisVAP applications.  Mike is a registered civil engineer in the states of Utah, Idaho, and Montana.

When not modeling traffic flows, Mike enjoys playing board games and tabletop miniature wargames with friends and family.

James Cretella

ARUP

Preparing Toronto Pearson Airport for the Future with Vissim

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) is performing an updated infrastructure assessment of both airside and landside elements within Toronto Pearson Airport to determine capacity constraints and prepare for solutions engineering. To assist with this effort, Arup created an interconnected, airport-wide Vissim model to analyze key groundside elements including terminal curbs and roadways, as well as the surrounding local roadway network.

Abolfazl Afshari

New Jersey Institute of Technology

A Real-Time Digital Twin Platform for Intersection Traffic Monitoring and Simulation-Based Evaluation Using LiDAR Data and VISSIM

Abolfazl Afshari is a PhD candidate in Transportation Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the integration of artificial intelligence and simulation in transportation systems, including digital twins, traffic modeling, and smart mobility infrastructure. He has several peer-reviewed publications and has received multiple awards for research excellence in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

Shaun Bready & Sydni Heckenberg

HDR

Airport Traffic Operations - Don’t Dwell on it

Shaun has 15 years of traffic engineering, traffic analysis, transportation planning, corridor mobility, and traffic studies throughout the World. His expertise includes traffic simulation, traffic operations, and design level traffic analysis for a diverse range of transportation projects. Shaun has led various large and small-scale urban, rural, and regional transportation projects including site development, intersection and interchange design, access management, geometric design, traffic light timing and synchronization, parking studies, airport studies, and corridor planning studies. Shaun has also led airport traffic planning at some of the countries largest international airports. Shaun’s experience also includes maintenance of traffic (MOT), accident analysis, railroad RTC modeling, right-of-way coordination, and traffic simulation software business development.

Sydni is a Traffic EIT in HDR’s Salem, Oregon office. Her experience is in traffic analysis, specializing in traffic simulation and traffic operations for a diverse range of transportation projects, including site development, intersection and interchange design and access management and corridor planning studies. Sydni is specialized with the implementation of transport and traffic simulation, forecasting models, and tools including Aimsun Next, Vissim, Synchro, TransModeler, Visum, Cube, TransCAD, SIDRA, as well as with traffic count and O/D survey database manipulations, their adaptation to various growth patterns and interfacing between simulation models and transportation network

Katherine Turner & Zoey Zhang 

Fehr & Peers

Muni Metro Modernization: Modeling Light Rail Improvements in a Complex Urban Corridor

The Muni Metro Modernization Study used VISSIM to analyze and improve a complex light rail corridor in San Francisco that operates on a historic and constrained dedicated right-of-way, in a shared right-of-way on neighborhood streets, and in a dedicated right-of-way in the center of a state highway. The multimodal analysis covered 14 intersections, included St Francis Circle, one of the most complex intersections in the city, which contains five vehicle legs, two diverging train tracks with interlocking and transit pre-emption, eight vehicle phases, and eighteen pedestrian phases. This presentation will focus on how we modeled the complex St Francis Circle intersection and balanced train reliability, frequency, and speed improvements with multimodal operations along this corridor. 

Yunjie Luo (F&P), Diwu Zhou (F&P), Jeremy Jackson (HDR)

Fehr & Peers and HDR

Enhancing VISSIM Microsimulation of I-405 with Cluster Analysis Techniques

Yunjie Luo is a transportation engineer/planner in Fehr & Peers Long Beach office. She has technical and qualitative experience in big data, travel demand forecasting, transportation modeling, traffic impact analysis, traffic simulation and multimode planning, among other topic areas. With a strong background in scripting and engineering, Yunjie brings data-driven insights to transportation projects across Southern California.

Diwu is a transportation engineer who is passionate about balancing mobility and safety. He leverages his deep understanding of traffic operations and design, safety best practices, and big data analytics to provide clients with research-backed recommendations. He is the current Vice-Chair of the Transportation Safety Council at Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) International.

Jeremy is a Senior Traffic Engineer in HDR’s Salem, Oregon office with 20 years of experience in integrating planning, environmental, and engineering studies. His experience spans the country and includes traffic simulation and traffic operations for a diverse range of transportation projects including site development, corridor planning studies, interstate/interchange improvement projects, and innovative intersection and interchange design and analysis.

Mukesh Thummala

Mott MacDonald

Diridon Station Pedestrian Modeling Study

The pedestrian modeling for Diridon Station was conducted to support the business case for the station’s multi-level redevelopment. The primary goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed design and quantify its benefits—particularly in terms of reduced transfer times between access modes and transit platforms. These insights were used to demonstrate the operational advantages of the new design and strengthen its justification within the broader business case.     

Abolfazl Afshari

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Trajectory-Based Calibration of VISSIM Using Grey Wolf Optimization: Investigating Market Penetration and Data Resolution Requirements

Abolfazl Afshari is a PhD candidate in Transportation Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the integration of artificial intelligence and simulation in transportation systems, including digital twins, traffic modeling, and smart mobility infrastructure. He has several peer-reviewed publications and has received multiple awards for research excellence in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

Sam Boso

WRA

Smarter Signals: Deploying Advanced Multimodal Signal Timing Strategies Using Software-in-the-Loop Simulation

WRA, in a collaborative effort with the University of Pittsburgh, is analyzing a set of advanced signal timing and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) features along two targeted corridors in the City of Pittsburgh using PTV Vissim. The results and insights developed from the Vissim analyses will be used to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) to follow and use as guidance when deploying advanced signal timing technology along various corridors in the jurisdiction.

Sam Boso is a transportation engineer with seven years of experience at Whitman, Requardt & Associates (WRA). His primary experience includes traffic simulation, forecasting, travel demand modeling, and multimodal modeling.

Jeremy Jackson & Mingwei Shen

HDR

All Modes in Motion: Multimodal Modeling of Complex Event Conditions Using PTV Vissim

Jeremy is a Senior Traffic Engineer in HDR’s Salem, Oregon office with 20 years of experience in integrating planning, environmental, and engineering studies. His experience spans the country and includes traffic simulation and traffic operations for a diverse range of transportation projects including site development, corridor planning studies, interstate/interchange improvement projects, and innovative intersection and interchange design and analysis.

Mingwei is a Traffic Engineer at HDR in Portland, OR. He has extensive experience in traffic operations analysis and simulation modeling across a wide range of transportation projects—including traffic impact assessments, feasibility studies, and the design of innovative intersections and interchanges. His expertise includes multimodal modeling, traffic forecasting, and microsimulation. Mingwei is passionate about delivering data-driven multimodal solutions to complex mobility challenges.

Jin(xiang) Ren

ODOT

A Proposal to Simulate Potential Traffic Conflicts/Crashes at Signalized Intersections

Sima Ashayer

University of Tennessee, Chattonooga

Synchronizing Traffic Simulation and Visual Realism: A Vissim-CARLA Integration in Chattanooga

Sima Ashayer is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Her research focuses on intelligent transportation systems, driver behavior modeling, and simulation-based analysis. She works with integrated platforms such as PTV Vissim, Unreal Engine, and CARLA to develop high-fidelity, co-simulated urban environments for multimodal traffic research and human factors studies.

Jeremy Jackson & Sydni Heckenberg

HDR

Calibrating Vissim Models Across the World

Jeremy is a Senior Traffic Engineer in HDR’s Salem, Oregon office with 20 years of experience in integrating planning, environmental, and engineering studies. His experience spans the country and includes traffic simulation and traffic operations for a diverse range of transportation projects including site development, corridor planning studies, interstate/interchange improvement projects, and innovative intersection and interchange design and analysis.

Sydni is a Traffic EIT in HDR’s Salem, Oregon office. Her experience is in traffic analysis, specializing in traffic simulation and traffic operations for a diverse range of transportation projects, including site development, intersection and interchange design and access management and corridor planning studies. Sydni is specialized with the implementation of transport and traffic simulation, forecasting models, and tools including Aimsun Next, Vissim, Synchro, TransModeler, Visum, Cube, TransCAD, SIDRA, as well as with traffic count and O/D survey database manipulations, their adaptation to various growth patterns and interfacing between simulation models and transportation network.

Ardeshir Mirbakhsh

GPI

Multimodal Microsimulation in High-Profile Infrastructure Projects

Dr. Ardy Mirbakhsh is a Senior Transportation Engineer at Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. (GPI). He earned his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering in 2022, with a research focus on connected and automated vehicles and microsimulation. Dr. Mirbakhsh has extensive experience in traffic modeling and simulation for both vehicles and pedestrians, benefit–cost analysis, traffic impact studies, signal timing optimization, and connected/autonomous vehicles

Amin Rad & Tony Lo

WSP

From GUI to Code: Comparing Vissim Techniques for Shared BRT Lane Simulation

Amin Rad is Lead Professional Traffic Engineer in Seattle, Washington. With a strong background in traffic operations, traffic simulation, safety analysis, and transportation planning.

Tony Lo is Traffic Operation Manager in Seattle, Washington with over 30 years of experience in traffic analysis and traffic simulation.

Shalini Sankaranarayanan

WSP

PTV Vissim Applications for Multimodal Corridor Evaluation Under VDOT’s STARS and Project Pipeline

Shalini Sankaranarayanan, P.E., PTOE is a Senior Technical Manager at WSP with over eight years of specialized experience in traffic engineering, multimodal corridor planning, and highway safety analysis. She has successfully led projects for both public and private sector clients, including multiple TxDOT districts and Regional Mobility Authorities.

Shalini has served as both project engineer and task lead on a wide range of transportation initiatives, including Traffic Impact Analyses (TIAs), corridor studies, and safety evaluations. Her technical toolkit includes advanced modeling and analysis using VISSIM, Synchro, Highway Capacity Software (HCS), and Safer by Design Safety Scoring Tools. 

Nikhil Tangirala

DB-ECO

Validating Rail Station Designs Through Pedestrian Simulation: Insights from Operational Scenarios

Nikhil Tangirala is a Consultant at DB E.C.O. NA, specializing in bus and rail service and operations planning. His work at DB has additionally included the development of pedestrian simulations for existing and planned rail stations, as part of DB’s station planning efforts. He will be presenting his work on rail station pedestrian simulations using PTV Viswalk, and will detail DB’s approach and methodology in developing and interpreting these models.  

Zach Harland, Joe Blasi & Soheil Sajjadi

HNTB

Greenline MetroLink

Dr. Soheil Sajjadi has over 17 years of experience in the mobility industry and academia. He has more than forty journal papers and conference proceedings presented over the years. He is currently the Co-Chair of the SimCap User Group for the North Carolina Section of ITE (NCSITE). Currently, Soheil lives in Charlotte, NC, where he serves as a senior technical advisor for the Central States Office and North Carolina.

Joe Blasi has more than 20 years of experience as a transportation planning engineer and project manager for HNTB’s Central States office in Kansas City, Missouri.  Mr. Blasi founded and leads HNTB’s transportation modelers user group, which connects over 200 HNTB modelers to share modeling knowledge and experience.   He was honored to be named an HNTB Associate Fellow in 2019 for his leadership of the modeling group and expertise in traffic modeling.  Joe has three children and likes to play ultimate frisbee.

Zach Harland serves as a transportation planner with over 3 years of experience for HNTB’s Central States office in Des Moines, Iowa. Zach is a member of HNTB’s transportation modelers user group and has worked on various traffic and safety projects during his career. Zach enjoys spending time with his family and friends, watching sports, and learning history and geography.

Yousef Mashal, Abolfazl Afshari & Conrad Hardy

New Jersey Institute of Technology

EVALUATION OF CHANGEABLE INDOOR WAYFINDING FOR PASSENGER SAFETY ACROSS VARIED OPERATIONAL CONDITIONS IN TRANSIT FACILITIES

Yousef Mashal is an undergraduate research assistant and civil engineering major at New Jersey Institute of Technology. They assist in developing pedestrian and traffic simulations, integrating tools such as PTV Vissim and CARLA under the guidance of Dr. Joyoung Lee.

Abolfazl Afshari is a PhD candidate in Transportation Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the integration of artificial intelligence and simulation in transportation systems, including digital twins, traffic modeling, and smart mobility infrastructure. He has several peer-reviewed publications and has received multiple awards for research excellence in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

Valerie Tan & Ron Ramos

Fehr & Peers

I-580 Richmond-San Rafael Bridge Improvements: Open Road Tolling and HOV Lane Conversion

This presentation will cover the development and benefits of the proposed improvements to the I-580 Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, a vital corridor connecting Contra Costa and Marin Counties in California. The project replaces existing 7-lane toll plaza with an open road tolling system to reduce collision risk and improve safety. It also converts a westbound general purpose lane into a high occupancy vehicle lane to increase lane utilization, prioritize transit and high occupancy vehicles, and encourage mode shift. Join us to learn how advanced traffic simulation and modeling techniques inform congestion reduction and safety improvements on one of Bay Area’s key toll bridges.

Jiyeon Ban

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Simulation-Based Assessment of Operational Strategies for Visibility-Responsive Variable Speed Limits

Jiyeon Ban is a master’s student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), specializing in Transportation. Before starting her graduate studies, she spent over 12 years at the Korea Expressway Corporation, where she served as Senior Manager. In these roles, she managed the Section Speed Enforcement System and Variable Speed Limit System, led key highway traffic management initiatives, and contributed to the development of advanced safety measures. She was also involved in monitoring transportation data reliability, conducting traffic surveys, and implementing Connected ITS (C-ITS) pilot projects supporting Korea’s smart highway strategies. 

Her thesis, “Simulation-Based Assessment of Operational Strategies for Visibility-Responsive Variable Speed Limits,” builds on this extensive experience to explore strategies for enhancing highway safety during adverse weather through traffic management approaches. 

Mengqing Wang & Jiyang Liu, P.E.

WSP

Vissim modeling for Bi-directional Median Bus Lane

The presentation demonstrates traffic simulations for three options of Bus Rapid Transit lane configurations in urban cities: mixed flow lanes, dedicated lanes, and bi-directional median lanes. A bi-directional BRT lane on roadway median which serves BRT vehicles on two opposing directions offers a potential solution to spatial constraints in dense urban environments. The example project intends to serve as a unique demonstration of modeling the complex signal detection and operation system for a reversible bi-directional transit lane in Vissim software.

Mengqing is a lead senior traffic engineer with expertise in traffic modeling, planning, design, and safety. She brings a strong passion for optimizing transportation systems, with experience spanning freeway operations, arterial traffic studies, transit systems, roundabout design/operation, national park access, airport traffic management, and emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles.

Jiyang Liu, P.E. is a traffic engineer based in WSP’s Seattle office, with extensive multi-state experience in various areas of traffic engineering, including traffic operations analysis, traffic signal design, signage design, and safety analysis. He is versed in PTV software and has developed simulation models featuring multimodal at-grade intersections with elements such as BRT, light rail, streetcar, and highway systems.

Siqing Yi

Alta Planning + Design, Inc.

Trains, Traffic, and Transit Signal Priority (TSP): VISSIM Simulation of Light Rail Service Improvements in Silicon Valley

Siqing Yi is a transportation planner and traffic operations specialist at Alta Planning + Design. With 8 years of experience, she brings expertise in tools like VISSIM to evaluate multimodal performance and support data-driven decision-making. Siqing has contributed to a broad range of projects across California, including rail, BRT, bus, parking, TDM, CEQA/TIA, and active transportation. She is passionate about advancing sustainable transportation and improving multimodal access.

Alex Chambers

Ricondo

Modeling the Complexities of Las Vegas Airport

Mahmoud Raoufi

Insight Transportation Consulting

Simulation and HCM Analysis

Katie Craig, Luc Sehn & Namratha Murthy

WSP

True Elevation Integration and Automated Volume-Routing Updates in Vissim Models

Randy Johnson & Ben Stabler

DKS

Simulation-Based Assessment of Operational Strategies for Visibility-Responsive Variable Speed Limits

Suresh Chenna & Marian Ankomah

Jacobs

Development of robust Public Transit model using the GTFS data on existing highway