July/August 2023 - 18

Jessica Alvarez, PTP
Vice President
and Senior Project
Manager
Foursquare
Integrated
Transportation
Planning
As one of Foursquare ITP's Vice Presidents, Jessica
Alvarez, PTP, helps set the direction of company
operations and strategic planning. Additionally,
she serves as a senior project manager and practice
lead for Foursquare ITP's bus rapid transit (BRT),
Bus Priority and Corridor Planning service area,
leading a team of transportation planners at various
stages in their careers. During the plast nine
years at Foursquare ITP, Alvarez has worked on
more than 80 transportation projects across 12
different states.
Alvarez has led the technical analysis for several
high-profile projects, including serving as the
deputy project manager of service design for the
Better Bus Network Redesign in the Washington,
D.C., region. For the project, Alvarez spearheaded
the development of detailed market assessments
and existing conditions dashboards and reports,
helped create a redesigned bus network plan for
the region that will address transit needs of the
community and identified opportunities for extensive
public and stakeholder engagement.
Over the past few years, she has shepherded
new approaches to microtransit planning, including
microtransit feasibility and implementation
projects across the country. Alvarez has worked
Transit planning is an everevolving
field, ranging from the
introduction of new types of
service to new technologies. "
with Foursquare ITP to write the microtransit
and on-demand DRT guidebook for the National
Center for Applied Transit Technology. She has
presented at major conferences as a subject matter
expert on microtransit, including at the WTS National
Conference and Rail~Volution (now Mpact).
For the lpast two years, Alvarez was the project
manager for the Metrobus Annual Line Performance
Report, working with a team of data scientists
to create an elevated process that quickly
synthesizes and visualizes important route level
data across the system. She also recently worked
with a team on the Charlotte Area Transit System
Envision My Ride - Bus Priority Study and
led the development of a comprehensive bus stop
improvement plan.
Fast Fact: Alvarez's first internship was with the
city of Gainesville's Regional Transit System.
MassTransitmag.com/53067923
Neela Babu is the start-up manager for the Potomac
Yard Metro Station in Alexandria, Va.,
which opened on May 19, 2023,
In her position, she works with various groups
Neela Babu
Start-Up Manager
Washington
Metropolitan Area
Transit Authority
across Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
(WMATA) to ensure their needs are met,
especially for the operations and maintenance
groups who will be working in the station for
decades to come. Babu holds responsibility over
testing, systems integration and commissioning
activities to prepare the station to be ready for
opening to the public. She also leads the safety
certification process, managing all required documentation
necessary to achieve required approvals
to open the station for public use.
She has spent a lot of time with the DC chapter
of the WTS International where she is currently
serving as the immediate past president after being
president in 2020-2021 and vice president in
2018-2019. In these roles, Babu worked to expand
the breadth of the organization, specifically by
engaging women at different levels in their careers
and ensuring the chapter provided programming
for all of them. Babu also serves as a WTS mentor
and is an advocate of the chapter's Transportation
YOU program, which introduces transportation
career options to high school students.
18 Mass Transit | JULY/AUGUST 2023
It is immensely valuable to
have people around you who
will work with you to achieve
an objective and people
who will teach you about
their area of expertise. "
During the pandemic, Babu worked to increase
the size of the organization and 10-plus new volunteers
were added to the board. Prior to that,
Babu's dedication to the organization resulted in
her winning the WTS-DC Member of the Year
award for her role on the Program Logistics
Committee alongside her co-chair Brittney Gick.
Beyond WTS, Neela is involved in the Metro
Washington Chapter of ARCS, which is a
non-profit organization dedicated to providing
scholarships to U.S. graduate and undergraduate
students pursuing degrees in STEM fields. She is
also on the Advisory Board for the Engineering
Leadership Program at Harvey Mudd College.
Fast fact: Babu plays ultimate frisbee.
MassTransitmag.com/53068378
http://www.MassTransitmag.com/53067923 http://www.MassTransitmag.com/53068378
July/August 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July/August 2023
