Rail Transit Sessions Speaker:
Biography
Shankar Rajaram
Executive Project Director – Vehicles. Buildings, Infrastructure, and LRV Division
Biography: Shankar Rajaram is the Executive Project Director – Vehicles. Buildings, Infrastructure, and LRV Division – Design Engineering and Construction Management at Sound Transit. In this role, he manages the engineering and commissioning aspects of new light rail vehicle procurements.
Shankar entered the transportation industry in 1998. He joined Sound Transit in 2014 and has served in several capacities over the past several years. In addition to his role in LRV procurements, he also provides technical leadership to noise and vibration engineering at Sound Transit for all transit modes. He developed rail roughness limits for Sound Transit’s new rail grinding requirements, which were implemented in 2018 and 2019 with noticeable reduction in noise generation at the wheel/rail interface. He currently manages a wheel/rail interaction study to understand the mechanics of independently rotating wheels and their effect on maintenance. Shankar has also made significant contributions to the Northgate Link floating slab track design improvements under the University of Washington.
Prior to joining Sound Transit, Shankar played a key role in the development of technical specification for the natural rubber-based elastomeric spring used in the floating slab tracks in the University of Minnesota campus for the Green Line light rail transit.
Shankar holds a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Southern California.
He has published and/or presented more than 50 papers in the field of transportation noise, vibration, and transit systems.