Palm Tran has announced the appointment of a new member to its Executive Leadership Team (ELT). Khaled Shammout, director of transit planning joined Palm Tran on Friday, March 31, 2017.
Shammout is an accomplished transit leader and comes to Palm Tran with over 22 years of both public and private sector experience in the industry. As the Director of Transit Planning at Palm Tran, Shammout will plan, organize, and direct all of the activities of the Transportation Planning Division including: scheduling, bus stops and shelters, strategic planning, grant research and other planning-related research and analysis functions. He will be a member of Palm Tran's Executive Leadership Team (ELT). He will also lead Palm Tran’s Route Performance Maximization (RPM) project, which is a comprehensive redesign of Palm Tran’s bus network.
In his previous position as the Chief of Bus Services for Makkah Mass Rail Transit in Saudi Arabia, Shammout managed a multi-billion dollar effort of creating the first-ever bus transit system in Makkah. This included developing a strategic plan, creating a bus network, developing specifications for bus and ITS procurement, designing bus stops/facilities and much more. Prior to this, Shammout served as the Deputy Director of Mass Transit for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) where he oversaw the service planning, Skyway, paratransit services, regional coordination efforts, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), facilities and operations. Shammout has also worked for Abu Dhabi Department of Transportation, TranSystems, and the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA), where he was involved in transit planning and operations efforts, managing long/short term plans, Major Investment Studies (MIS), on-time performance analysis and transit scheduling and service.
Shammout holds two Master's Degrees (City/Regional Planning and Civil/Transportation Engineering) and a Bachelor's Degree in Architecture both from the Ohio State University. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), American Planning Association, Institute of Transportation Engineers, and ITS America's Advanced Public Transportation Systems Committee. He has written several white papers and contributed to many reports and books on transportation planning.
