SATYEN PATEL USED TO WORK IN
the Ministry of Defence in England as
a principle manufacturing engineer,
systems engineer, working on the UK
and U.S. defense systems. He met his
wife in Massachusetts and eventually
they moved back to the United States
to start a family.
Looking for a job during the economic
downturn was extremely challenging,
especially for someone not
from the United States, he said. Eventually
he was hired by the Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority to bring
quality control and quality management
to the maintenance area and from there
was charged with overseeing the asset
management program.
As director of asset management
within the MBTA Engineering and
Maintenance Directorate (E&M), Patel
continues to demonstrate a commitment
to not only his assigned duties and responsibilities
but to the overall departmental
mission of providing safe and
reliable service delivery to our internal
and external customers alike.
In June of 2015 on behalf of the
42 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017
MBTA, Patel participated in an Federal
Transit Administration-sponsored State
of Good Repair (SGR) Roundtable held
in Denver, Colorado, and is presently an
organizing committee member of the
2017 FTA SGR Roundtable scheduled
for August 2017 in Massachusetts.
He has developed the world’s fi rst
transit-orientated cleaning management
system that enables cleaning coordinators
to digitally score sights and allows
management to instantly see where there
are defi ciencies in the cleaning of multimodal
stations and facilities.
Patel has recently presented at the
National Transit Institute and is a member
of the American National Standards
Institute & American Society for Testing
and Materials.
Fact:
Though he said
he’s never been
a straight-A
student, he got a
4.0 at Ohio State
University. He is
a member of the
Institute of Asset
Management
and is hosting
the regional
conference
in Boston this
September.
MassTransitmag.
com/12355097
“I joined the MBTA and I made a commitment to get
this done. I feel obligated that I want to do it. I serve the
people a nd guests of Massachusetts … I’m trying to build a
supportable program that eventually, when I leave, we did
the right thing for our customers. That’s really the focus of
what I’m trying to do here; what’s right by our customers.”
Satyen Patel,
MBA, CEng, MEng,
MIET, MIAM
Director of Asset
Management
Massachusetts
Bay Transportation
Authority
SEAN NORTHUP IS DEDICATED TO
improving transit in Central Indiana
in a way that few people are. He has
been entirely devoted to improving
transportation in the region since 2010
when he started working on the Central
Indiana Transit Oriented Development
(TOD) Strategic Plan with the private
fi rm Greenstreet Ltd.
Th e Indianapolis MPO hired Greenstreet
to create an objective analysis of
potential rapid transit corridors in central
Indiana. His passion for the project soon
led him to his move from the private sector
to serve as assistant executive director
of the Indianapolis MPO, to continue his
work on transit and lend his expertise toward
tackling other transportation challenges
in central Indiana.
As part of the MPO, Northup has been
integral to the development of additional
transit-focused studies, primarily the
continuation of the TOD Strategic Plan,
into which was added further phases
for more detailed analysis into the rapid
transit corridors and recommendations
for developing their potential station
areas. He assisted in the development of
alternatives analysis studies for the Red
Line and Blue Line Rapid Transit corridors
and helped secure a $2 million TIGER
planning grant for environmental and
design work for the Red Line and a $75
million Small Starts Capital Investment
Grant for the construction of the Red Line.
Northup facilitated the creation of a
new interactive mapping tool that was
used to compare Marion County’s current
transit service areas to what they
would be under the proposed strategic
plan. Th e tool used pin drops to help
users visualize what future trips could
look like, and what the change would
be for how long the trip takes. Th e tool
also showed how far a person could go
in an hour’s transit trip from a pin drop.
Fact:
Northup teaches
classes at Ball
State University,
his alma mater.
MassTransitmag.
com/12356565
Sean Northup
Deputy Director
Indianapolis
Metropolitan
Planning
Organization
In early February, Northup was part of a Urban Land
Institute Technical Assistance Panel that considered a
potential transit-oriented development along a major transit
route in Pittsburgh. For three days he toured Pittsburgh with
other ULI members, learned about the local tra n sit system,
and assisted the team in providing recommendations for
how Pittsburgh can move forward with their plans for TOD.