July 7, 2018
A precious few in our profession rival the contributions John Zegeer has made and the leadership positions he's held. Kittelson would not be where it is today without the risks John took and the investments he made on our behalf.
- Mark Vandehey, PE, President/CEO, Kittelson & Associates
April 2018
It is with mixed emotion that Kittelson announces the retirement of senior principal engineer John Zegeer, PE, PTOE. The firm held a retirement dinner in John’s honor on April 13, 2018, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Colleagues and clients, past and present, as well as Kittelson staff from across the country, joined John and his wife Annie to celebrate John’s achievements.
John’s retirement brings to a close a 45-year career dedicated to traffic safety, transportation planning, functional design, traffic operations, and applied research. Along with leading a wide variety of projects, John conducted independent research, taught transportation-related topics in professional seminars, and authored papers that advanced the state of knowledge in transportation. Most recently, he was the principal investigator for a major update of the 2010 Highway Capacity Manual.
My earliest meetings with John, in the late 1970s, were through TRB's Committee on Highway Capacity and Quality of Service. In those meetings, John was always a significant contributor, with perceptive questions and observations. It was clear that his voice was respected by everyone sitting around the table of that very prestigious committee.
- Wayne Kittelson, PE, Founding Principal, Kittelson & Associates
John joined Kittelson in May 1996, simultaneously opening the firm’s first branch office, in Ft. Lauderdale. This milestone event changed Kittelson from a small, single-office West Coast consulting firm into a multi-office firm with a national presence. John’s joining in 1996 brought Kittelson to a total of 45 employees and two offices; today, we number 200, in 24 offices across the United States (with five offices in Florida alone).
In explaining why he decided to join Kittelson, John said that he expected to have 20 to 25 years of remaining professional life, he wanted to use that time to help develop the next generation of professional leaders, and he had come to realize that this was Kittelson’s primary mission, too.
John gave Kittelson the professional reputation and credibility to become a perennial serious contender in the research world, to expand our market penetrations into public sector work across a greater number of local economies, and to attract talented people who never would have considered joining a firm located only on the West Coast.
John's excitement to take a risk to build a Florida presence created a sense of optimism throughout the firm. It energized me to take on new challenges, and ultimately gave me the confidence to start the Boise office a few years later.
- John Ringert, PE, Senior Principal Engineer, Kittelson & Associates
We will greatly miss John Zegeer’s day-to-day presence at Kittelson, but we congratulate him on a job well done and a retirement richly deserved. We thank him for his contributions to the professional development of so many of our staff, to the growth and potential that Kittelson as a firm now enjoys, and to the betterment of the transportation profession, which is a big part of John’s enduring legacy.
