Pennsylvania
240.252.5111
crossett@highstreetconsulting.com

Joe Crossett looks forward to a world where drone deliveries cut out the need for grocery trips, so he can devote more time to analyzing the connections between transformational transportation technologies and traffic volumes.
As a 25-year transportation veteran, Joe started his career at Wisconsin DOT. He is a founding Partner with High Street where he serves many longstanding clients including FHWA, FTA, USDOT, TRB and numerous state DOTs; advising them on the economics, management and planning of effective transportation systems. Joe’s work often puts him in front of the people responsible for managing America’s transportation systems, including FHWA, numerous states and the National Academies of Sciences. Joe’s passion is distilling complex transportation issues into useful information, whether via a well-written report, website or workshop. When he is not at work, you can usually find him either carpooling his kids to soccer games or crashing his mountain bike in the hills and valleys around Pittsburgh, PA.

Washington Metro Area
240.252.5111
henkin@highstreetconsulting.com

Tamar Henkin gets energized working shoulder to shoulder with clients on the thorniest of financial and management challenges. Tamar is a founding Partner with High Street where she has spent the last eight years collaborating with senior policy and management staffs at US DOT and many state and local transportation agencies as well as AASHTO, APTA, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board. Before co-founding High Street, Tamar led infrastructure finance practices at several well-regarded consulting practices where she helped develop many of the finance innovations at play today, including the federal credit (TIFIA) and state infrastructure bank programs, among others. Tamar continues to serve as a financial advisor to US DOT’s TIFIA program and advises FTA in the delivery of Capital Investment Grants (New Starts), ensuring that the agency’s loans and grants strike the right balance of risk and return. Tamar met one of her greatest and most rewarding challenges serving as a lead consultant to the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, working alongside a phenomenal group of Commission members to formulate and draft a report to Congress. In her spare time, and when not visiting with family, Tamar can often be found throwing balls for her pal Yofi or whacking them at opponents in a USTA recreational tennis league.

Colorado
240.252.5111
secrest@highstreetconsulting.com

Craig Secrest is a big picture thinker who enjoys exploring and developing solutions to the organizational, institutional, and process challenges that prevent transportation agencies from achieving their full potential.
Craig is a founding Partner of High Street and has nearly 25 years of transportation experience, including early career positions with FHWA and the Colorado DOT. During his 18 years as a consultant, he has provided strategic, business process, and organizational management consulting services to a diverse range of clients that include FHWA, FTA, USDOT, TRB, State DOTs, MPOs, and the Asian Development Bank.
Craig’s forte is developing comprehensive yet simple frameworks for considering and explaining the often complex and confusing array of considerations that drive transportation policy and management. In his spare time, Craig can be found doing martial arts, playing squash, biking and skiing with his two sons, or enjoying the solitude of fly-fishing the Colorado River.

South Carolina
240.252.5111
carroll@highstreetconsulting.com

Jeff Carroll is a Partner at High Street. He understands that while transportation is a simple idea, today’s vast, interconnected and multimodal transportation network demands forward-thinking to keep people and goods moving efficiently. Our transportation world and economy has changed significantly in the time since Jeff started his career at Georgia DOT Office of Planning and today Jeff is among those at the forefront in driving state DOTs and MPOs to develop innovative plans, projects, programs, and policy solutions. Jeff aspires to work with federal, state, and regional partners to confront future challenges and then apply his rigorous foresight to plan and implement 21st century solutions to preserve and create a resilient multimodal transportation system that supports future generations. And speaking of future generations, Jeff enjoys planning tennis, golf, or jumping on the trampoline with his 10- and 8-year old daughters.

Pennsylvania
240.252.5111
batista@highstreetconsulting.com

Anna Batista likes to inhabit the space where warm and fuzzy policy meets cold, hard data. As a graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s quantitatively driven Heinz School of Public Policy, she’s learned to know and love numbers, facts, and SQL. At the same time, Anna knows the importance of balancing the ideal and the actual, and has done so while serving transportation agencies at High Street, guiding the development of Allegheny County’s transportation vision, evaluating government programs at the GAO, and navigating financial regulations at Vanguard. Since joining High Street, she has conducted economic assessments for DOTs, assisted in FHWA rulemakings, developed numerous transportation performance measures, and crunched data sets large and small. Anna prides herself on her ability to distill messy and complex information down to clear and useful knowledge. Outside the office you can find Anna turning cartwheels on the playground with her kids, admiring the trees of Pittsburgh, or dancing west coast swing.

Washington Metro Area
240.252.5111
hashem@highstreetconsulting.com

Seemeen Hashem has extensive experience in graphic and web design. In her past positions as the Creative Director and Founder of Aqueous Studio and as a Visual Information Specialist at the International Monetary Fund, Seemeen has developed a talent for transforming data into graphics that communicate and inform. She has served in an adjunct faculty role at the School of Art and Design at Montgomery College and her work has been seen in U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Post. When she’s not designing or visualizing data, she’s painting or creating assemblage art. Seemeen also enjoys going to see concerts, bike riding, tennis and planning the next family vacation with her husband, two kids and two dogs.

Pennsylvania
240.252.5111
gernhard@highstreetconsulting.com

Brittany Gernhard likes to translate numbers into plain English. She knows the value of using data to inform action, and has used her quantitative training in public policy to help local governments make difficult decisions. She saw wildly imaginative growth in transportation safety and efficiency become reality while working at Carnegie Mellon’s University Transportation Center. In 2015, she joined High Street and is thrilled to be supporting clients as they leverage data to reach lasting solutions for the transportation systems they manage. Outside of work, Brittany can be found road tripping with her husband, cooking something reckless in her kitchen, and learning the languages of R and French.

Pennsylvania
240.252.5111
dean@highstreetconsulting.com

With experience that combines engineering design and construction with transportation planning and policy, Erin Dean brings a unique understanding of transportation to High Street. She has worked with private consulting firms for 10 years, providing support on projects from plan development through the construction of projects. Specific experience includes highway design, stormwater management design, long range transportation plans and freight plans. Erin enjoys using her technical expertise and understanding to help inform plans and bring a sense of practicality to the planning process, and strives to assist clients with meeting their transportation system goals. When she’s not working, Erin enjoys the art of dance, bicycle rides with her family and quality time with her two energetic, young boys.

The client: Maryland DOT

The challenge: Set the agenda for Maryland’s 20-year transportation future:
Transportation planners in Maryland are tasked with setting the path for maintaining and expanding the state’s transportation system so that it remains a vital engine of growth while also adapting to emerging, but powerful new forces like an aging and more diverse population; Millennials entering the workforce, but choosing to live in dense urban neighborhoods; shrinking revenues for transportation; aging public infrastructure; and rapid advances in vehicle technology.

High Street’s solution: We helped Maryland DOT and their stakeholders - from the Eastern Shore to Baltimore and through to the Western Appalachians - create a forward thinking 20-year transportation plan that will help guide the state’s transportation executives manage the opportunities and threats of a changing world. Please click on the image to read a pdf of 2035 Moving Maryland Forward Plan.

The client: Missouri DOT

The challenge: Explain why freight transportation matters to Missourians:
The connection between transportation and our economy sometimes feels like a vague and abstract concept. Missouri DOT’s leaders wanted more tangible ways to explain the unique ways Missouri’s multimodal transportation system sustains the State’s economy.

High Street’s solution: We helped Missouri DOT and its freight stakeholders tell fresh, interesting, and data driven stories about the how the economic viability of several Missouri-based industries – from agriculture to manufacturing – depend directly on transportation. Please click on the image to read about the results of our work.

The client: FHWA

The challenge: As FHWA shifted its performance management focus from policy development to implementation through the formal Federal rulemaking process, the agency needed support in developing a rigorous economic assessment of the cost to states and MPOs of complying with rules implementing the national performance measures proposed in MAP-21.

High Street’s solution: We have conducted a full economic assessment for each of FHWA’s three separate performance measure rules that analyzes the potential costs and benefits of the rule.

The client: Florida DOT

The challenge: Florida DOT (FDOT) is a leader among state DOTs in its efforts to integrate performance management practices into its transportation programs and projects. FDOT sought help in enhancing the clarity and quality of its efforts to communicate performance information.

High Street’s solution: We developed written materials, data analysis, summaries, fact-sheets, and graphics all designed to streamline performance reporting at FDOT by using cleaner, simpler words and charts to convey critical messages buried in data.

The client: AASHTO

The challenge: In preparation for reauthorization activities, AASHTO’s Standing Committee on Planning (SCOP), sought to hold a day and a half executive round table session with its members that focused on developing a framework for integrating a federal performance-based program into state planning and programming processes.

High Street’s solution: As part of the preparations for the round table, High Street developed a read-ahead white paper that defined the steps of performance-based planning and programming and presented a straw man approach for how FHWA and FTA would need to change their roles and policies with respect to each step. High Street also facilitated several elements of the round table discussion and supported the development of a round table proceedings document.

The client: NCHRP

The challenge: Adherence to planned budgets and schedules is a prerequisite of good performance for all state DOTs. At any time, a DOT has hundreds of projects – large and small - underway. Each project may take months or years from start to finish and without skillful planning and execution, delays or added costs can easily occur that are unacceptable.

High Street’s solution: High Street compared the performance of 39 state DOTs in delivering transportation construction projects within their originally anticipated cost and schedule. The study examines each state’s performance track record for all projects finished over a period from January 1, 2001 to June 30, 2010. Typical projects included in the analysis span the full range of a DOT’s activities including operations work, such as installation of ITS devices or traffic signals; maintenance activities, such as guard rail installation or striping; pavement preservation work, such as resurfacing; bridge preservation work, such as deck replacement; and capacity additions. A major work product of the study is a user-friendly web database that participating states can use to review their results.

The client: FTA

The challenge: FTA is required by Federal law to assess the financial capacity of its grant applicants.

High Street’s solution: High Street has conducted financial capacity assessments on FTA New Starts projects including the evaluation and rating of the project against the New Starts financial criteria. Through review of the applicant’s financial plan and models for the proposed project, system operating and capital budgets, annual financial reports, and other documents, High Street analyzes the ability of the applicant to deliver its non-federal share of funding, operate and maintain its core transit services, and complete project construction by the revenue operations date, including cash flow and timing of receipt of funds. Projects for which High Street has completed assessments include Orlando SunRail, Boston MBTA Green Line Extension, San Diego MidCoast Corridor, Fort Worth TEX Rail, Arlington Columbia Pike Street Car, Santa Ana OCTA Streetcar, Chicago CTA Red Purple Line Modernization, and Indianapolis BRT.

The client: Maryland DOT

The challenge: Maryland’s highly regarded transportation network is the lifeblood of the state, but in 2011 the Governor and the legislature recognized the need to set course for a new, more secure, heading.

High Street’s solution: High Street assisted Maryland DOT’s Office of Planning and Capital Programming to provide support to the Maryland Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation Funding in providing research and analytical support, including development of a menu of potential revenue sources, comparison of funding approaches across states, a summary of recent transportation funding-related legislative initiatives nationally, and assistance in drafting Commission reports and support materials. By providing both the analytical and communications support, High Street has been able to help MDOT develop its positions and prepare for anticipated debate on these critical topics.

The client: Kansas DOT

The challenge: KDOT sought to address two major challenges with its 2008 LRTP: 1) the gap between future transportation needs and projected revenues and the need for KDOT to develop a more strategic, flexible and responsive approach to decision-making.

High Street’s solution: We supported a stakeholder-driven process to evaluate the current status and future needs of all modes of the Kansas transportation system. High Street had an instrumental role in developing a new transportation decision-making process for balancing investment in preservation and capacity needs. High Street staff also led the development of the financial forecast and funding options analysis. In a related effort, High Street provided staff support for the Kansas DOT in preparing a 2008 report to the Governor on critical transportation needs. The T-LINK report provided input to the Governor and the State Legislature as they debated the focus and scale of the state’s transportation program. High Street continues to work on developing analytic tools and decision-making processes for evaluating economic development impacts and community concerns within an expanded project selection process. The process was pilot-tested by KDOT in the fall 2009 and is being used to evaluate about 200 potential projects annually in the development of annual transportation programs.

The client: Ohio DOT

The challenge: Ohio DOT sought a comprehensive inventory of transportation services and infrastructure, forecasts of transportation demand, asset condition and performance, and an analysis of the trends affecting transportation in Ohio.

High Street’s solution: High Street was part of the team that assisted ODOT in developing performance measures, needs forecasts, and revenue scenarios as part of the development of Access Ohio 2040. The firm also developed and evaluated investment scenarios and innovative finance strategies to support plan finalization.

High Street also supported a related initiative to update the scoring system used for prioritizing major projects over $12 million. The project teams’ recommended changes enabled Ohio’s Transportation Review Advisory Council (TRAC) to better account for local economic development initiatives, investment in complementary programs, and equitable treatment of distressed areas in the project selection process. The project included national best practice research on state DOT programming processes and creation of new ways to develop and apply technical travel model and transportation performance measures within the context of an economically meaningful prioritization approach.

The client: Arizona DOT

The challenge: Arizona DOT faced a daunting challenge: prioritizing nearly $89 billion of transportation needs over the next 25 years with only $26 billion of expected revenue. Despite this, ADOT also seeks to commit increased funding to non-highway modes, providing expanded travel choice.

High Street’s solution: High Street played a key support role in the development of What Moves You Arizona, a 25-year statewide multimodal transportation plan for Arizona. The project included visioning, creation of a planning framework and process, revenue forecasts, needs determinations, scenario-building, and identification of alternative investment choices. It had a heavy performance measures component, which will help drive ADOT’s capital programming process and will be a key consideration in this project. High Street led the creation of goals, objectives, and performance measures to both drive plan development and support its implementation. The firm also conducted a diagnostic review of ADOT’s current programming processes, provided recommendations on to better link planning and programming, and supported development of both investment scenarios and financial forecasts.

The client: SHRP/FHWA

The challenge: FHWA and SHRP needed help in producing a creative marketing plan for re-branding the complex Transportation for Communities - Advancing Projects through Partnerships (TCAPP) tool that provides states and MPOs with guidance on transportation planning and programming processes at the state and metropolitan level.

High Street’s solution: We were part of the project team that conducted market research to build an understanding of TCAPP’s potential audience and then created branding and imagery around the name ‘PlanWorks’ that has helped establish it in the market place for ideas as an innovative resource for planners.

The client: TRB

The challenge: TRB needed a strategic communications plan that positions this respected national authority on transportation-related research, to continue to advance innovation throughout the world and influence decision-makers at the highest levels of government and industry as the world in which it operates continues to evolve with other information providers and conveners competing for attention and influence.

High Street’s solution: We were part of a team that helped develop a Strategic Marketing and Communications Plan that assesses how stakeholders perceive TRB’s communication practices and makes recommendations for advancing the organization’s marketing and communication methods.

The client: NCHRP

The challenge: While preservation is a logical and cost effective way to address declining infrastructure conditions - every $1 spent on keeping a good road in good condition saves $6 to $14 when compared to rebuilding a deteriorated road - the public’s lack of awareness about and enthusiasm for highway preservation is frightening to many in the industry.

High Street’s solution: We wrote a guide for state transportation agencies on how to close the gap between understanding the importance of highway preservation and being able to successfully communicate that value to leaders inside their agency and to the agency’s most important outside stakeholders. The Playbook outlines a step-by-step strategy for using effective market research to target critical audience segments with creative messages that resonate via ‘surround sound’ content delivery methods. The guide is designed to help DOTs create their own preservation-themed communication campaigns.

The client: NCHRP

The challenge: For years, smart economists have studied the role of transportation in the economy. Their data-rich, technical, and abstract studies are filled with terms like ‘multiplier effects,’ ‘agglomeration impacts,’ ‘job years sustained,’ or ‘aggregate travel time savings.’ From a messaging perspective, however, products like these suffer ‘the curse of knowledge,’ which means non-economists (which includes 92 percent of Congress!) are apt to tune out the long, cluttered, and complex messages they contain. The point is not to beat ourselves up about what we’ve done, but to recognize the value of expanding research on transportation’s role in the U.S. economy to include broader perspectives than those conveyed in the abstract and highly technical studies produced today.

High Street’s solution: We developed a set of web infographics and YouTube videos that explore how changing economic opportunities are driving a new set of transportation needs. These products are designed to help transportation practitioners in every state face the challenge of finding compelling ways to engage their stakeholders on the economic importance of making the next generation of investments that will sustain America’s prosperity. Rather than producing only a traditional print or PDF report, we created a website with short stories, told not only in a printable ‘case study’ factsheet format, but also told with web-video and infographics. The stories are designed to show how transportation is intimately linked with some of today’s most interesting and compelling economic transformations. http://202489b.trb.org/NCHRP20-24(89)B/

The client: National Cooperative Highway Research Program

The challenge: How to start a conversation about the nation’s transportation future?
NCHRP’s researchers know that transportation’s future will be determined by the interplay of impossible-to-predict changes in technology, the environment, global and local politics, the economy and society. Business could be as usual, but equally plausible are a range of alternate scenarios that each come with different transportation implications. In a multi-million dollar research effort, NCHRP led a series of reports prepared by some of the preeminent thinkers on transportation in the U.S; each report features detailed expert insights, trend analysis, frameworks for organizing, and technical tools. When their work was done, NCHRP needed help marketing the research to practitioners.

High Street’s solution:In coordination with our project partners, we branded the NCHRP work as the ‘Foresight Series’ co-wrote informational materials, developed workshops and presentations and produced a video. Please click on the image to read the report or watch the video here.

The client: Federal Highway Administration

The challenge: How to bring cutting edge data analytics and visualization to FHWA?
We live in the information age. Data drives our lives more than at any time in human history. In an era characterized by exponential growth in the flow of data, however, separating the signal from the noise is the challenge. FHWA wanted to create a Data Visualization Service Center that expands the agency’s data visualization horizons with on-call access to state-of-the-practice capabilities and resources.

High Street’s solution: High Street’s transportation data visualization center for FHWA provides a wide bench of players – from policy experts, to web architects, to data analysts, to graphic designers who can apply statistical techniques and creative design skills to communicate stories clearly and effectively through graphical means.

The client: Asian Development Bank/China Ministry of Roads

The challenge: Assess the impacts and effectiveness of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) national highway program reforms, and provide recommendations to address ongoing challenges such as inadequate funding and weak program administration and oversight.

High Street’s solution: Working with the PRC’s Institute of Highways, we conducted an extensive diagnostic of reform implementation through interviews with a wide range of national and provincial highway officials. We then identified a series of key issues and challenges associated with reform effectiveness and, through a series of workshops with senior PRC transportation, finance, and development officials, developed a set of recommendations that included identification of new highway funding mechanisms, improvements to institutional capacity, and changes to national and provincial program delivery roles, program structures, and funds management practices.

The client: National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission

The challenge: Assess future federal highway and transit investment needs, evaluate the future of the federal Highway Trust Fund, and explore alternative funding and financing mechanisms for surface transportation.

High Street’s solution: Worked alongside the Commission in a highly interactive style as they evolved from a loose confederation of individuals with varying interests and ideas to a cohesive body that strived to develop a consensus set of recommendations for addressing the country’s future transportation investment needs. Conducted analysis related to the Highway Trust Fund’s fiscal health and a wide range of funding options and financing approaches, developed an evaluation tool that Commissioners used to assess options, and helped prepare recommendations and the final report to Congress.

The client: Northeast Corridor Commission (NECC)

The challenge: The Northeast Corridor is the busiest passenger railroad network in the United States. The latest five-year capital plan integrates capital programs and priorities among its four infrastructure owners, nine passenger rail operators, and government agencies throughout the Northeast. While the Plan provides a united strategy to reverse decades of deterioration, it is 90 pages long. NECC sought a concise, web-based version of the Plan that allows stakeholders to easily see how their jurisdictions can benefit from the Plan.

High Street’s solution: Working with the Commission staff, High Street developed a highly visual interactive website that distills critical information in the Plan into an easy to navigate site that features a clickable map of all proposed projects.
Visit NECC website.

The client: Oklahoma Department of Transportation

The challenge: Select an effective set of performance measures for the 2015-2040 Oklahoma Long Range Transportation Plan to inform decision-making, improve accountability, and focus attention on the Department’s strategic priorities.

High Street’s solution: To gain a clear understanding of how to integrate performance measures into the ODOT’s structure and process, High Street interviewed key ODOT staff in the core disciplines of safety, infrastructure, system operations, environment, modal planning, and asset management, and we reviewed and assessed relevant data sources to assess quantitative gaps. Based on this coordination, we focused our attention on measure definitions, methodologies, potential targets, applications, and data sources and aligned the measures with the 2040 LRTP goals and objectives to ensure consistency with MAP-21 and Oklahoma’s values.