November 2021 - 22

Andrea
Aaby, MPH
Director of
Compliance and
Development
Laketran
Andrea Aaby was hired by Laketran in February
2018 to serve as the grants and procurement
specialist. She quickly learned government
compliance and grant reporting procedures
and helped Laketran secure funding to replace
16 fixed-route buses that had reached the end
of their useful life. Within three years, Aaby
secured more than $10.5 million in funding for
10 electric buses and charging infrastructure
through competitive grants, and she secured an
additional $3.6 million to purchase seven diesel
fixed-route buses.
Aaby also wrote the agency's first Equivalent
Service Plan, allowing Laketran to purchase
non-accessible vehicles to operate a more
efficient microtransit service while still meeting
the federal requirements that guarantees
people with disabilities access to public transportation.
In her procurement role, she developed
multiple competitive procurements for
IT, construction, equipment, buses, software
and goods and services throughout the year.
Aaby was promoted in November 2020 to her
current role of director of compliance and
development where she is responsible for
Laketran's Triennial Review. She also serves as
the project manager on major capital projects,
like the construction of two transit centers that
includes installation of electric bus chargers
for en-route charging. Concurrently, she is
Being able to explain your
agency's goals in clear, concise
and easy to understand language
will lead to winning grant
applications and solicitations
with fewer addendums. "
overseeing the installation of two additional
standalone electric chargers at other locations
that will allow Laketran to electrify its entire
fixed-route bus system. She is also spearheading
the design and engineering for the
headquarters and vehicle storage expansion.
In addition to writing and preparing grants, Aaby
has taken a lead role in advocacy efforts by creating
meaningful relationships with federal and
state elected officials. These relationships have
helped Laketran leverage funding opportunities
and receive imperative support for grant applications.
Aaby is described by peers as a young,
dynamic and passionate director who drives to
make meaningful changes in the community by
improving transportation access to residents.
Fast Fact: In the past year three years,
Aaby has prepared, wrote, developed and
managed more than 15 state and federal
grants, securing $52.6 million in funding.
MassTransitmag.com/21246410
Raymond
Chan, Ph.D.
Business Operations
Manager
Greater Dayton
Regional Transit
Authority (RTA)
Raymond Chan is a multifaceted public
transit professional advancing state-of-the-art
concepts by utilizing data and organizational
decision-making techniques. As a doctoral
student, he worked on risk and resilience in
public transit systems, developing metrics to
better understand long-term effects of operational
decisions on system performance.
He also developed innovative techniques to
communicate complex models and data to
executive leaders in transportation, culminating
in custom built web dashboards that
were instrumental in communicating half
hourly systemwide headway adjustments for
the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) in 2012.
Chan's post-academic career has placed him
in transit agencies of various sizes. At CTA, he
led efforts to automate many business processes
within the planning group to increase
efficiencies in operational planning and ridership
reporting. This led to increased efficiencies
in developing data-oriented operational
planning proposals, placing more precise
service levels to meet customer needs. With
advanced analytics support, he helped the
agency demonstrate new uses of the data
derived from the account-based fare system.
He also managed CTA's data warehouse,
increasing its size to include more than
seven billion rows of actively query-able
22 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | NOVEMBER 2021
My colleagues and I know
that innovation depends
on collaboration and
experimentation to find the
solution to incrementally
improve service delivery. "
AVL, APC, AFC, workforce, maintenance
and customer service data stretching over
15 years by integrating data management
techniques to move data throughout the
agency efficienctly with minimal budget.
At Greater Dayton RTA, he is actively involved
with metric development, data management
and technology within the operations
group to increase operational efficiency.
Chan has taught more than 100 students
at Northwestern University and mentored
transit professionals in data governance and
data analysis techniques. He currently sits
on three Transportation Research Board
standing committees and has authored
numerous peer reviewed papers.
Fast Fact: Chan helped lead a team that
developed one of the industry's first passenger
crowding dashboards during COVID-19.
MassTransitmag.com/21246373
http://www.MassTransitmag.com/21246410 http://www.MassTransitmag.com/21246373 http://www.MassTransitmag.com
November 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November 2021
