After graduating from high school with a general diploma at age 16, James Echols worked at various jobs and on a survey party for the Virginia Department of Highways (VDH) for several years. While working at VDH, Mr. Echols applied for admission to Virginia Tech under the Cooperative Engineering Program. He entered the five year program, alternating work quarters with the VDH with college quarters at Virginia Tech, and graduating in civil engineering in 1958. While attending Virginia Tech, he was inducted into a number of honorary engineering and scholastic societies.
Upon graduation, Mr. Echols was awarded an Automotive Safety Foundation scholarship and was employed on the highway engineer trainee program at VDH. Upon completion of graduate school at the Yale University Bureau of Highway Traffic, he was assigned to the Bristol District of the Highway Department as district traffic engineer. The Bristol District included 12 counties in Southwest Virginia. The principal highway in the district was U.S. Route 11, which contained several sections of three-lane roadway. The section between Bristol and Abington was a particularly heavily traveled section, with a high percentage of trailer trucks and a high accident rate. The pavement marking allowed vehicles from both directions to pass using the center lane. Mr. Echols helped design and was responsible for installing a pavement marking system that eliminated opposing vehicle use of the middle lane of a three-lane highway, significantly reducing accidents and improving vehicle flow. It has been adapted as standard practice in Virginia and other states.
In 1963, he took a position with the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, serving as Urban Transportation Planning Engineer for Region 2, which included Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, West Virginia, District of Columbia, and Virginia. His work with the bureau involved assisting with comprehensive urban transportation studies in metropolitan areas of more than 50,000 people throughout the region.
In 1966, Mr. Echols accepted a position with the Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (TPB), and was responsible for a substantial part of the major travel surveys and analyses of the National Capital Region. In 1968, he was appointed to serve as project manager for the Shirley Highway Express-Bus-on-Freeway Project, a National Demonstration Project of the U.S. DOT, and the first project in the country to develop freeway lanes for the exclusive use of express bus service. Mr. Echols led the introduction of car-pools into the lane, thus increasing both the people carrying and auto volume capability of the system. The Shirley Highway High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes remain one of the most successful applications of HOV transportation service, which has been adopted as a Federal standard and is now in use throughout the U.S.
The Northern Virginia Transportation District Commission recruited Mr. Echols in 1972 to manage its technical program, including the public transit elements of the Shirley Highway Express-Bus-on-Freeway project. In 1974, he became the first executive director of the Tidewater Transportation District Commission. He led the acquisition of privately owned bus systems in the cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Suffolk and their integration into a regional system and formed Tidewater Regional Transit (TRT).
His professional activities include participation in the National Academy of Science’s Transportation Research Board, serving as committee member and chairman, TRB Committee and Section on Public Transportation; member, National Cooperative Highway Research Program Advisory Committees, projects on transit demand, demand-responsive public transportation, and high-occupancy vehicles; and chairman, Shirley Highway Steering Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. He has been a member, American Society of Civil Engineers; fellow, Institute of Transportation Engineers; and a registered professional engineer in Virginia. He has served as a presenter and panel member at technical sessions of the American Public Transportation Association and at summer conferences of the Transportation Research Board. He has served as secretary, Virginia Association of Public Transit Officials and chairman of the Satellite Parking Lot Shuttle Bus Service for the Yorktown Victory Bi-centennial Celebration.
Mr. Echols’ Virginia Tech related activities include serving as a member of the Advisory Committee, Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation Research Center, and as a member of the Advisory Board, Virginia Tech Research Center of Excellence for the Transportation System program. He taught a course as an adjunct professor at the Northern Virginia campus.
He received an Outstanding Public Service Award from the U.S. DOT and Special Recognition from the Virginia Association of Public Transit Officials.
Mr. Echols’ civic activities include having served as a member of Board of Directors of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Virginia; member of Business Advisory Council at Norfolk State University; and member of Board of Directors and vice-chairman of the Tidewater Chapter of the American Red Cross. His hobbies are traveling, reading, gardening, and family genealogy.
He is married to Sylvie Steele, and the father of four children, three of whom graduated from Virginia Tech, and the youngest from the University of Virginia