2024 40 Under 40: Alanna McKeeman, AICP

Alanna McKeeman, AICP, vice president and senior project manager, Foursquare Integrated Transportation Planning, oversees the company’s internal business processes as they relate to staff experience, engagement and development. Since joining Foursquare ITP in 2017, her focus on staff engagement has had a critical impact on the company’s designation as a Great Place to Work and its nearly 90 percent staff engagement rate.

McKeeman also oversees Foursquare ITP’s Microtransit and New Mobility service area, which has grown into a robust practice of microtransit planning for regions of varying sizes. For the service area, she has provided strategic direction, business development, project management, and contributed to the creation and promotion of an operator-neutral planning and ridership tool.  

Her experience extends to financial and strategic planning, program evaluation, performance management, research, and innovative public and stakeholder engagement. Some of her high-profile projects at Foursquare ITP have included the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA)’s Bus Network Redesign, for which she has led the public and stakeholder engagement for more than two years, the original  Atlanta Region Transit-Link Authority’s (ATL) Annual Report and Audit (now Transit Report), and Bloomington Transit’s 10-Year Strategic Plan in Indiana.  

On the Better Bus Network Redesign for WMATA, as task lead for public and stakeholder engagement, McKeeman guides and coordinates a team responsible for engagement planning, creative content, events, market and customer research, surveys, focus groups and advertising and reporting. She is responsible for strategic engagement planning, deliverable review and engagement execution and facilitation across three phases of the project. McKeeman’s leadership, creativity, and management on the project has provided WMATA with award-winning engagement campaigns that have helped reach all communities in the Washington, D.C., region.

For the ATL —a new transit agency and funding organization in Atlanta, Ga.,—McKeeman managed the development of the authority’s first annual transit report, which provided an analysis of the performance trends of nine federally funded transit operators in the 13-county region.  

She directed and oversaw the team’s process of inventorying, collecting and reconciling each provider’s available data to identify key performance indicators and benchmark the region’s transit systems. She led workshops with boards and staff of the authority, Georgia Department of Transportation and the region’s transit providers to ensure that the report would best reflect the region’s transportation, transit, and community goals. McKeeman’s management and report quality secured Foursquare ITP’s continued work on the authority’s yearly transit report for the next five years, during which the team added new elements such as performance tracking dashboards.  

For Bloomington Transit, McKeeman planned and facilitated staff, leadership, and board work sessions to develop the agency's first-ever strategic framework and developed strategies and actions to help the agency reach its goals and those of the region. Additionally, McKeeman led development of performance metrics to track progress toward the goals and objectives and worked with senior leadership to develop a plan with clear owners, timelines and expectations. After the Bloomington Transit Board’s approval of the strategic plan, McKeeman and her team were asked to hold a regional transit summit for nearly 90 regional stakeholders to tackle key questions and challenges facing transit in the region.

McKeeman has played a key role in many other projects at Foursquare ITP, including a fare study for Alexandria, Va., which resulted in the city remaining zero-fare, with ridership shortly thereafter significantly surpassing pre-pandemic levels. She was also the lead author of the Virginia Transit Crisis Response and Recovery Handbook for Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation and is currently serving as principal investigator for a Transit Cooperative Research Program synthesis about microtransit in rural communities.  

She is an active member of Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS). She has presented at the WTS International conference and serves as the DC Chapter’s Scholarship and Fundraising Committee Chair. McKeeman is certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners and holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning and a bachelor’s in economics.  

Is there a specific experience that led you to where you are today?   

Moving to New York City when I was 18 was the experience that showed me what great transit looks like. I grew up in a small city in Minnesota where we either walked or drove to get around. When I got to New York, I realized how much I loved living in a place where transit often gets you somewhere faster than driving. I also realized that transit was what makes cities work – there’s no way big cities could function if people were only getting around by car.  

What do you enjoy most about your job?   

I love being able to work closely with clients to help them better serve the public with high-quality, sustainable transportation options. There are so many opportunities now to bring together more location-based data and qualitative input to create transit services that work better for people. It feels like a privilege to be at the forefront of this work.  

What’s the most challenging part of your job?   

Transit is such an underappreciated resource in so many parts of the U.S. I think changing the overall perception of buses and helping people understand how public transportation benefits them—even if they never set foot on a bus—is a challenge.  

I think another challenge is also an opportunity – the industry is evolving so fast, especially due to technological advances. It keeps the work interesting and exciting.  

Finally, in engagement, a challenge can be reaching people and getting them interested in a transit planning project, especially if it’s more abstract or long-term. At the same time, I enjoy working with clients to tackle this challenge by helping people understand how plans affect them!  

Accomplishment you’re most proud of and why?   

A career-changing experience for me so far has been leading (on the consultant side) engagement for WMATA’s Bus Network Redesign. I’ve learned a lot from the process and it’s been amazing to see what our amazing cross-company, multi-disciplinary team has been able to accomplish together. Getting to work on the redesign of the bus system I ride with my daughter daily feels like the kind of project every planner dreams of doing.

I’m also proud to have a leadership role at Foursquare ITP. It is a privilege to be able to make a difference both for my clients and for the industry’s most passionate and dedicated planners, data scientists, designers and TDM specialists at our firm.  

What is an accomplishment you would like to work towards in your career?   

Eventually, I want to be able to look back on my career and feel like I made a meaningful mark on the transit industry by making service work better for people and improve lives. Moving the needle on what transit looks like in the U.S. can feel like an uphill battle at times, so if I can point to a specific improvement or impact I had, that would be great.

I would also like to continue to support women and other underrepresented groups in the transportation field more generally. I believe the quality of our collective work can only improve as we get more perspectives at the table.