Liza Amar, AICP is an Associate and a Discipline Leader for travel forecasting at CDM Smith. She has 15 years experience developing and applying travel demand models for state, MPO, and regional agencies. Liza holds a BS in Civil Engineering and a MS in Transportation Planning from NC State University.

Jawad Hoque is a PhD candidate at the University of Kentucky. His primary research focus are quantifying uncertainty in traffic and transit ridership forecasts and evaluating factors affecting transit ridership. He is currently working on creating a multi-modal simulation model to represent trade-offs between fixed route and on-demand transit and ride-hail operators.

Sumit Bindra is Senior Modeler in the forecasting group at TransLink's Research and Analytics Division.

The forecasting group is responsible for developing and maintaining the travel demand model for the Vancouver region. The group has been involved extensively in helping the region assess and mitigate long and short term impacts of COVID-19 on transit ridership which is the focus of this presentation.

Rachel Copperman is the national practice lead for model development at Cambridge Systematics with expertise in developing regional and statewide travel demand models. She is a leading expert in incorporating uncertainty and risk analysis within the travel forecasting process. Dr. Copperman also specializes in intercity passenger rail and long-distance modeling, having led development and application of the ridership and revenue forecasting model for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. She is also a key team member of the FHWA project to develop an exploratory and risk analysis tool (TMIP-EMAT) for transportation models, and is currently integrating TMIP-EMAT with a Houston regional travel model and a microsimulation model to support an evaluation of policies under a range of alternative futures. Dr. Copperman received a Doctorate and Master’s degree in Transportation Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Mr. Arunachalam is a Vice President and a Senior Project Manager leading Arcadis’ Texas Region Mobility Business Line. He has over 16 years of experience in research and consultancy with a broad focus on Advanced Planning, Traffic and ITS Engineering. Mr. Arunachalam’s expertise includes freeway and arterial corridor studies, sub-regional planning studies, managed lanes feasibility studies, micro, meso and macroscopic simulations, predictive safety analysis, ITS Planning and performing benefit to cost analysis for infrastructure investments.

Xu got a MASc degree in transportation from the University of Alberta. Then Xu worked for the City of Edmonton as a transportation engineer for five years. He finished massive transportation planning and modelling projects to shape the city better. Afterwards, Xu joined Translink in 2019 and was involved in many projects, such as Transport 2050 and Burnaby Mountain Gondola. He used his modelling expertise to support the planners and decision-makers to design better policies and strategies. Xu is an experienced planning engineer with a P.Eng designation in EGBC. His skills include transportation modelling, planning and engineering.