Allen D. Biehler was Secretary of the

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Yassmin Gramian. Presently, Pe ...

, a position he held between 2003 and 2011. Barry Schoch was designated as his successor by Governor

Tom Corbett Thomas Wingett Corbett Jr. (born June 17, 1949) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 46th governor of Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Attorney General of Pennsylvania from 1995 t ...

Family and education

Born in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

, Biehler and his wife, Diane, were longtime residents of

Crafton, Pennsylvania Crafton is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, west of downtown Pittsburgh. The population grew from 1,927 in 1900 to 4,583 in 1910 and to 7,163 in 1940. The population was 6,099 at the 2020 census. History Crafton is nam ...

prior to his appointment as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in 2003. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and his Certificate in Highway Transportation at Yale University.

Career

From 1996 to 1997, Biehler served as interim CEO of the

Port Authority of Allegheny County Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT, formerly Port Authority of Allegheny County) is the second-largest public transit agency in Pennsylvania and the 20th-largest in the United States. The state-funded agency is based in Pittsburgh and is overseen ...

. After his tenure as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Biehler was appointed as a Distinguished Service Professor of Transportation Systems and Policy at the

Heinz College The Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, often called Heinz College, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a private graduate college that consists of one of the nation's top-ranked public policy schools— ...

at Carnegie Mellon University and as Executive Director of CMU's University Transportation Center.Schmitz, John.
City expands high-tech traffic signals: Officials, CMU students team up to uce red-light wait times
" Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', May 2, 2014, p. 11 (subscription required). He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

Legacy

As Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department Transportation for eight years, Biehler was an advocate for highway funding, which led to him becoming head of an organization that was in charge of highway systems, and enabled him to administer "one of the nation’s largest grant programs for mass transit, rail freight, and aviation." He also developed and named a program named "Smart Transportation", which: * streamlined and stabilized the Commonwealth's transit program * accelerated PennDOT's highway project delivery processes * ensured that highway projects became assets for the surrounding community.

Awards

*Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Pittsburgh Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1997. *William Metcalf Award for Outstanding Engineering Achievement, Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania, 2004. *Transportation Person of the Year, The Traffic Club of Philadelphia, 2009. *Friend of Pennsylvania Award, 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, 2010. *Service to Humanity Award, March of Dimes of Pennsylvania, 2010. *Bachelor of Science degree in

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

, Pittsburgh, PA 1967 and a Certificate in Highway Transportation (Masters equivalent), Yale University, New Haven CT 1968

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Biehler, Allen Living people Swanson School of Engineering alumni Yale University alumni State cabinet secretaries of Pennsylvania Year of birth missing (living people) Port Authority of Allegheny County executives Carnegie Mellon University faculty