Light Rail Operating Strategies – 1976

Ontario set up a company to build a Canadian light rail vehicle. I worked on the operating strategy for LRT lines. The company eventually moved to Kingston and was later bought by Bombardier as the basis for its light rail ventures over following decades.

Automating Wind Tunnels – 1985

I was the liaison (i.e. shock absorber) between the management of an old-school engineering company and a group of crazy, but brilliant systems engineers. The geeks invented a system, “Talent” that was probably 5 to 10 years ahead of its time. It ran as a..… more

Selling Wind Tunnels – 1983

I worked in business development at one of the 3 companies in the world that you would call if you wanted a wind tunnel. I worked on contracts and project scheduling and writing proposals … lots of proposals. Some were even accepted.

Railroad Capital Investment Manual – 1981

I got a job in the Research Group at Canadian Pacific Railways (CP) in Montreal. It was type of internal consulting group and we tackled whatever weird issue arose. My biggest task was to rewrite the manual for cost-justifying capital projects at CP. In the..… more

Modeling Travel Demand for Toronto – 1974

The Metropolitan Toronto Transportation Plan Review was styled as the second major “post-classical” city transportation study. IOW, it was holistic, qualitative, and assumed that the process would be political. My role was to take a prior manual travel demand analysis and recast it in Fortran.

Subway Bid for Caracas – 1977

I worked for a year on the team that assembled a Canadian consortium bid to build the Caracas Metro. We lost the bid, but I did learn a lot of Spanish and traveled to Bogota and Caracas a number of times.