Cultivating a Transportation Safety Culture

Transportation safety investment benefits everyone — it saves lives, supports health, improves emergency response, protects workers and makes the movement of goods more reliable. Burns & McDonnell provides long-term support and guidance for the allocation of resources toward continuous transportation safety improvement. Our strong safety culture guides us in all projects, informing our holistic approach to shaping policy, analyzing data, identifying priorities, communicating strategies, changing behaviors and evaluating success. Using a range of data and innovative analysis approaches, we identify opportunities to design and build transportation infrastructure and safety treatments that support safer mobility for all.

Howard Lubliner, PE, PhD

Project Management & Highway Safety

20+ Years of Experience

Howard is a leading implementer of highway safety initiatives, focused on quantitative safety analysis for design projects and working with transportation agencies to make stronger, data-driven safety policies. Howard led the safety analysis for the Burns & McDonnell–implemented Beyond the Loop Planning and Environmental Linkages Study, which won the 2019 ACEC Missouri Engineering Excellence Award. He also used the safety benefit-cost analysis to secure a BUILD grant for the first construction phase. Previously, Howard led the Kansas Department of Transportation’s (KDOT) Highway Safety Manual implementation and conducted studies with KDOT, the Nebraska Department of Transportation and the Kansas Turnpike Authority to perform systemwide reviews of safety performance, provide recommended countermeasures, and implement enhanced analysis procedures and policies. Howard has served on or chaired numerous Transportation Research Board (TRB), American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) assignments in the areas of geometric design and highway safety, including the panel of NCHRP 17-71, tasked with oversight of the development of the AASHTO Highway Safety Manual, Second Edition.

Jessica Hutton, PE

Safety Innovation & Safety Plan Development

15+ Years of Experience

Jessica is a traffic engineer and project manager at Burns & McDonnell. Prior to joining the firm, Jessica spent 13 years conducting transportation safety research at MRIGlobal with a focus on urban and suburban arterials, the relationship between safety and speed, and vulnerable roadway users. Jessica supported the urban and suburban arterial research that eventually would become Chapter 12 of the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) (NCHRP project 17-26). She also served as a technical editor for the predictive safety methodology chapters (10-12) during production of the manual (NCHRP project 17-36) and led research for FHWA using naturalistic driving study data to evaluate the relationship between operating speed, safety, and roadway characteristics on urban and suburban arterials. She played a key role in evaluating the impact of motor vehicle safety countermeasures on pedestrians and bicyclists in NCHRP Project 20-07, Task 393, and contributed to research developing safety performance functions for pedestrians and bicyclists for inclusion in the forthcoming second edition of the HSM (NCHRP project 17-84). She drafted a new chapter on roundabouts for the third edition of the Human Factors Guide (NCHRP project 17-80). As a project manager at Burns & McDonnell, Jessica is leading a safety analysis of the entire Kansas Turnpike and is also helping the Kansas Department of Transportation develop new procedures for identifying, evaluating and prioritizing safety projects.

Allison Karagiorgas, PE, PTOE

Highway Safety Modeling, Crash Analysis, Project Prioritization, Countermeasure Identification, Roadway Safety Audits

12 Years of Experience

Allison is a roadway safety and traffic engineer at Burns & McDonnell. Her safety experience includes modeling, crash analysis, countermeasure identification, roadway safety audits and project prioritization. She uses her experience to identify countermeasures to reduce the risk of fatal and serious injury crashes in both existing, temporary and future configurations of roadways. She has experience modeling roadways to inform interstate, highway, and bridge design and reconstruction projects nationwide, including the I-44 Bridge Rebuild project and various roadway safety efforts across Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Texas and Utah. She has served as the technical lead in developing High Injury Networks, systemic and site-specific countermeasure identification, and project prioritization. She has also served as the assistant project manager or task manager on safety-focused projects and has led the effort to develop a state-specific approved countermeasure list for Kansas. Additionally, she has been the technical lead for Roadway Safety Audits, helping to identify countermeasures to reduce the highest severity and most frequent crashes. Her passion lies in creating actionable plans and projects that reduce fatal and serious injury crashes on roadways.

Josh Robertson, PE

Traffic Forecasting and Crash Analytics

16 Years of Experience

Josh specializes in transportation schematic design, planning and feasibility studies, traffic studies, and crash analysis. His team combines geospatial data from computer-aided design, geographic information systems and open data systems with advanced analytics to provide clients with intelligent digital models and decision-making tools. He has played key roles in feasibility and planning studies for numerous city and state agencies, including the North Texas Tollway Authority, North Central Texas Council of Governments and the Texas Department of Transportation.

Cheryl Kelley, PE, PTOE, RSP2I

Project Manager, Roadway Designer, and Safety Analysis Engineer

15 Years of Experience

Cheryl contributes to the safety, design and management of highway and road projects for state and local government agencies. Her primary responsibilities include project management, geometric design, safety analysis, construction sequencing, traffic analysis and roadside safety. Cheryl was one of the first to earn the Road Safety Professional 2 Infrastructure certifications in the United States. Cheryl focuses on application of safety to real-world situations, including analysis of existing crashes and impact of potential safety improvements as part of the Wilmington-Peotone PEL (planning and environmental linkages) study. She was also part of the Kansas Turnpike Authority (KTA) Safety Analysis team. As part of that study, Cheryl reviewed crash history and performed analysis on potential improvements at narrow bridges, at a 16-mile corridor through Wichita, and at the KTA’s left-exit service centers. Cheryl is proficient in a number of software applications that support design and collaboration on transportation projects, including MicroStation, GEOPAK, IHSDM, RSAP, Synchro and VISSIM.

Bobby Cottam, PE, PhD

Multimodal Transportation Safety, Assessment and Design

14 Years of Experience

Bobby has extensive experience across the entire safety analysis process, including data analysis, on-site investigations, stakeholder engagement, benefit-cost analysis and solution design. He has supported and led multiple projects for statewide programmatic improvements, utilizing data-based methodology to consider historic and systemic risk factors in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. He incorporates geographic information system (GIS) environments to help teams link, visualize and interpret safety datasets along with proposed improvements. He has conducted extensive research on investment decision-making for emerging transportation technology and system resilience, informing his unique insights on future‐proofing safety investments.

Kate Coggins

Civil Engineer, Transportation Design

3 Years of Experience

Kate is a transportation engineer with a focus on highway design. She has experience in geometric design, quantitative safety analyses and maintenance of traffic design. Her traffic and crash data analyses have informed municipalities in their crash mitigation solution decisions and assisted in the creation of a safety countermeasure database.

Nick Saia

Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety

1 Year of Experience

Nick brings experience in multimodal transportation planning, with a focus on bicycle and pedestrian safety. Prior to joining the firm, he spent one year as bicycle & pedestrian coordinator for the City of Manhattan, Kansas. Nick assisted city staff with research, writing and GIS modeling for transportation and land use planning efforts, including the 2023 Beyond Tomorrow Downtown Plan. He led an amendment to Manhattan's Bicycle & Pedestrian Systems Plan to designate safety-critical improvement projects. He then used the amended plan to execute an application for SS4A implementation funds. At Burns & McDonnell, Nick analyzes crash data, prepares recommendations for safety countermeasures and supports the development of design guidance.