Ashley Hightower

As a young adult living in the Memphis area, Ashley observed that it was nearly impossible to get around town safely or efficiently without a car. She heard stories of commuting over 1 hour on the bus to a destination only 20 minutes away by car and saw how people with mobility challenges were forced to take dangerous risks to access their destinations. Through traveling, Ashley experienced the value of quality public transportation, which inspired her to return to school at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for her second bachelor’s in civil engineering. During her time at UTK, Ashley researched current issues in public transit, including fare policy, ridership, and equity. Her paper, “Current Practices and Potential Rider Benefits of Fare Capping Policies in the U.S.A.,” won the Transportation Research Board William Millar Award for the best paper in the area of public transportation. Over the course of her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UTK, Ashley also became an APTA Scholar, UTC Student of the Year, an Eisenhower Fellow, and an Eno Fellow. As a master’s student, she enjoyed working on her thesis, titled “A Comparison of Time Series Methods for Post-COVID Transit Ridership Forecasting.”

In her career, Ashley’s goal is to help bring safe, thoughtful, quality public transit services to US cities. She believes in the collective sum of many small actions and the value of breadth of knowledge. At Kittelson, Ashley looks forward to gaining hands-on experience in public transit projects. In her free time, Ashley loves learning languages, traveling via rail, and roller skating.