From left: Antonio Ditri, Silvia Scheuermann, and Abbey Gancz 

Urban is pleased to announce that GVF has named Antonio Ditri, PE, Abbey Gancz, PE, and Silvia Scheuermann, PE, as top Transportation Demand Management (TDM) professionals under 40 years old. All three employees are based in the firm’s Philadelphia headquarters. GVF presents these awards to ambitious leaders that are working to find creative solutions to improve our quality of life through engineering, planning, marketing campaigns and the development of commuting alternative programs that are shifting behavioral change.

As a consultant manager working for Urban on the I-95/Betsy Ross Bridge/Aramingo Avenue Interchange Project, Mr. Ditri is responsible for inspection and field operations oversight of a $160 million PennDOT assignment to rebuild ramps and improve connections at the interchange in Philadelphia. The project will rebuild and improve the highway interchange, reducing congestion and improving travel for the local community, as well as those just passing through.

Professionally, Ms. Gancz has worked on some of Philadelphia’s most important projects for Urban, including ARLE Funded Citywide Intersection Improvements, South Broad Street Pedestrian Safety Improvements, and Roosevelt Boulevard Enhanced Bus Service Stations. As lead highway engineer on the Roosevelt Boulevard project for the city’s Streets Department, Ms. Gancz is most excited about how the project will create beautiful bus plazas for a new SEPTA bus service that will improve safety and accessibility on this corridor. The new service will offer improvements in frequency, reliability, and travel time over the current bus service, and will ultimately help manage demand on Roosevelt Boulevard.

As a leading team member behind Urban’s Traffic Operations and Intelligent Transportation Systems (TOITS) on-call contract with the city, Ms. Scheuermann has demonstrated her talents. She and the team have worked to help combat congestion and keep traffic flowing throughout Philadelphia by retiming 270 signals along various corridors. This program required a substantial data collection effort. Ms. Scheuermann was instrumental in developing and fine-tuning Urban’s data collection techniques. She also created custom spreadsheets for the city to streamline the process of developing clearance and pedestrian timings. These spreadsheets also facilitated the QA/QC process. All of these innovations enabled Urban to provide the City of Philadelphia with the highest quality product.

TDM affects everyone and the diverse backgrounds. GVF is a not-for-profit group created to advocate and promote viable transportation network for the Greater Valley Forge region’s economic vitality. The organization honors TDM professionals under 40 annually as a testament of the ever-evolving role TDM and these individuals play in local communities.