A Day in the Life of a Transit Planner: COVID-19 Edition

Janice Soriano-Ramos is a Senior Planner with Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). VTA is a special district responsible for providing multimodal transportation solutions throughout Santa Clara County in California, serving both as the county's transit agency and the county's congestion management agency. Janice has been with VTA for 2 years. Prior to serving the San Jose region, Janice worked as the TDM, Fleet and Communications Manager at Stanford Health Care and at Kimley-Horn as a Transportation Analyst. Janice holds an M.S. in Urban & Regional Planning at UW-Madison and a B.S. in Civil Engineering at Purdue University.

Jeff Sponcia is the Planning Manager at Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS). He is in his eighth year at the agency, and since then, has embraced a reduced dependency on the personal automobile. At MCTS, he manages two full-time Transit Planners and one Transit Planning Intern. Jeff holds a Master’s Degree in Geography at UW-Milwaukee and a Bachelor’s Degree from Marquette University in Writing Intensive English and History. Jeff’s favorite form of transportation is taking the bus, of course, and he has been a Remix power user since 2016.

Dan Nemiroff is the Senior Operations Planner with Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). SEPTA is a regional public transportation authority that services nearly 4 million people in five counties in and around Philadelphia. As Senior Operations Planner, Dan is addressing both service reductions in light of COVID-19 while simultaneously planning for recovery to implement hopefully in the near future.