Transportation Commission

Faith DeBolt

My family moved to the Finn Hill neighborhood in Kirkland from Seattle in 2011 so that I could be closer to my office in Bellevue. We are a one car family, and I bike commute year-round and use public transportation often. We chose to buy a home in Kirkland over Bellevue because Kirkland is a more walk-able and bike-able city, full of beautiful trees and green spaces. I hope to not only keep it that way but make it even more so. I believe providing people safe, multi-modal alternatives to single-occupancy vehicle transportation is the fastest, most cost-effective way to address the growing traffic problems in our region while maintaining its natural beauty and improving the health of our citizens.

I am a board member of Kirkland Greenways, the bike-to-school coordinator at Thoreau Elementary, and I contributed to the Finn Hill Neighborhood Plan. I look forward to bringing the problem solving skills I practice as an engineering consultant in the energy efficiency industry to the Transportation Commission and collaborating with my fellow commissioners, city staff, the Council, and other regional stakeholders. 

Brian Magee

Transportation is a passion of mine and has been ever since I was a kid. That passion led me to a career in civil engineering where, today, I am a Senior Transportation Engineer in HDR’s Bellevue office and an expert in complete streets design. I truly enjoy taking an active role in applying evolving trends in the industry to make transportation facilities safer, more welcoming, and more sustainable.

My family came to Kirkland in 2013 because we wanted to live in a community is committed to being walkable and a wonderful place for our young children to grow up. Over time, I’ve become an avid volunteer building community as a Board Member of the Juanita Neighborhoods Association (JNA), making our streets safer through the Neighborhood Safety Program (NSP), and as an Adopt a Pedestrian Crosswalk Flag volunteer. On the Transportation Commission, I am excited to apply my expertise as an engineer and as an engaged member of the community help Kirkland maximize investments into transportation to make our City an even better place to walk, bike, travel, and live.  

Kurt Ahrensfeld

I am a registered civil engineer with over 36 years of experience in the transportation consulting field, serving primarily local agencies (State, County and Cities) within the Puget Sound Region. As a Senior Project Manager in the Perteet Everett office, I have been involved in highway, transit, and non-motorized improvement projects for improving safety, mobility and capacity. These projects typically involve multiple public and regulatory agencies, numerous stakeholders and ever increasing public outreach. I find that my profession is rewarding not only for seeing projects successfully completed, but also the opportunity to work as a team and to create synergy and endorsement with stakeholders.

As a resident of Highlands for over 20 years, I have seen considerable growth and change in the greater Kirkland area and the challenges to maintain the spirit and atmosphere that is attractive to not only residents but local, national and international visitors. The growth of traffic and congestion and decreasing parking particularly downtown reinforce the need to make the community more livable and walkable. Improvements that make the city more attractive to pedestrian and bicycle traffic has the benefit of reducing the vehicular demand on limited infrastructure. I am excited by the opportunity to be part of the creation of short and long term solutions to transportation issues we face within the City.

Shreedhaarini Balamurugan 

As of 2022, I am a Sophomore at Lake Washington High School. I am always willing to learn, and I am a big computer science enthusiast, having learnt numerous programming languages and have had hands on experience with them. I love playing badminton and have been practicing for 5 years now. I have volunteered and tutored over 400+ hours in many different organizations and nonprofits that have taught me a lot of skills, such as teamwork, management and dedication.  

I have lived in Washington for 4 years. Moved to Redmond, Washington in 2018, then to Kirkland in 2021. During this period, I noticed many transportation challenges. With the skills I mastered through my experience and my position in the Transportation Commission, I want to bring awareness to transportation issues and concerns reported by residents of the community to provide the best transportation experience. In addition, I want to ensure that alternative eco-friendly forms of transportation, such as walking and biking, are just as preferred as riding in a car by improving safety and reliability. I look forward to preserving Kirkland’s beautiful greenery for the years upcoming.  

Patrick Vu

As a professional civil engineer, I have over 20 years of experience in the transportation planning, design, construction, and operations, with a passion for finding and implementing mobility solutions for public agencies and communities.  I founded my transportation consulting firm six years ago with the philosophy of offering innovative, yet pragmatic solutions for my clients.  It is this same philosophy and my experience working with diverse stakeholders that I would like to contribute back to the community my family and I live in.  Growing up in Juanita and having seen it and the region’s tremendous transformation over the past 30 years, I am excited to help the City navigate the challenges and opportunities it is facing to balancing growth and mobility in a sustainable way.

AJ Antrim

I have lived in the Puget Sound region my entire life, where I have commuted via bus, ferry, car, and foot.  In 2020, my partner and I moved to Kirkland in order for us to walk and bike to work.  Because of that, we are a one-car household which is proof of the benefits of transportation-oriented development.

With my position on the Commission, I hope to make it possible for others to use alternative forms of transportation such as walking, biking, and busing on their commutes by improving their reliability, safety, and convenience.  My life has been greatly improved by the recent infrastructure changes and I hope to provide a long-term, forward thinking perspective.

I graduated from the University of Washington in 2020 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and now work as a Vehicle Controls Engineer at Kenworth.

Rafael Fernandez

I am a computer scientist with over a decade of experience in the tech industry.  When I was in academia, I worked both in Computer Science and Civil Engineering in an exciting area called Intelligent Transportation Systems.  Things have evolved since then: we now talk about big data, when back then we talked about needing more data.  We now talk about artificial intelligence as a commodity, where back then it was a bit of a luxury.  The opportunity however remains the same: understand traffic flow and the dynamics of the transportation infrastructure in our communities through data analytics at scale.

Our family has been living in Kirkland for over a decade now and we have seen positive growth and exciting changes in our transportation infrastructure.  I joined the commission because I am interested in applying data analytics towards supporting multiple modes of transportation, promoting accessibility, and working towards making travel times more predictable.