Lynn Ann A. Peterson, 2005-2006 Maseeh Fellow

Lynn Peterson considers herself a “recovering highway engineer,” with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from Portland State University. Lynn started off her career in transportation with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in Highway Design and Construction and quickly realized that she wanted to have a better understanding about the political as well as the technical process for designing roadways as they travel through communities—urban and rural.

Since moving to the Portland region she has worked on transportation projects in the visioning, modeling, financing, and construction phases and is a nationally recognized expert in transportation and land use integration. She has dedicated her professional career to defining a larger toolbox of approaches to designing transportation systems that helps define a community’s character and beliefs as well as provide safety for all modes and accesses to businesses.

Since 2001, Lynn has served as Lake Oswego City Councilor. She has enjoyed working at this level on new initiatives in the city such as bringing the Portland Streetcar to Lake Oswego, working with neighborhoods on traffic planning and financing, protecting neighborhoods from infill development, and creating affordable housing. She was recently appointed to the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT).

Lynn is the first woman to be enrolled in the PSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. program. Working under the guidance of advisor Dr. Robert Bertini, Lynn has begun work to define her Ph.D. dissertation proposal. The purpose of her research will be to fill a gap in the knowledge of Context Sensitive Design and solutions. Currently she is working on a research project, funded through a grant with the Environmental Protection Agency, to look at how a boulevard/parkway design will work to replace a proposed freeway in a new city to be developed over the next 30 years in the Portland metropolitan region.