Tom Shook

“I’m committed to helping clients achieve project success in many forms, whether receiving construction funding, strategies to collaborate with partnering agencies, or leaning on best practice and lessons learned from other projects — improving livability through transit access and mobility.”

As leader of our bus rapid transit practice group, Tom applies his experience in planning and delivering BRT projects to elevate our combined transit and roadway skill set across the company. Tom’s passion for BRT stems from his desire to improve travel options and safe access to transit for those in need, as well as a goal of reducing reliance on single vehicle use. He provides leadership throughout our firm on best practices for BRT projects, and he especially enjoys helping staff meet their professional goals.

Tom’s exposure to BRT first came when he rode BRT service in Brazil — at the time an emerging transit mode that hadn’t gained popularity in the United States. He thought it was phenomenal and it sparked his interest in the transportation field. Since then, he’s made a point to try to ride BRT lines when he visits a new city.

In addition, Tom serves as a transit project manager, helping clients bring BRT and multimodal projects to life. He specializes in helping agencies gather strong public support and initiate objective decision-making, positioning projects to be highly competitive for funding.

He was the project manager for Mill Plain BRT in Vancouver, Washington, where his team designed a project to budget while ensuring that community feedback and needed improvements were incorporated into the design. His team was able to apply lessons learned from C-TRAN’s first BRT line to make Mill Plain more accessible and more efficient.

Tom is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied city and regional planning, civil engineering and geography, focusing on transportation planning.

He plans to one day return to South America and ride a world-class BRT — but this time as a BRT expert.