Charles Ukegbu, Ed.D, Assistant Commissioner for Regional and Long-Term Planning
Charles Ukegbu is a seasoned transportation strategist, with more than three decades of experience in municipal and state transportation policy, planning, and implementation. Reporting to the Chief Strategy Officer, he supervises Regional Planning, Mega Projects, Mobility Management, Alternative Fuels, and Mobility Studies teams focused on generating and using data to help the agency assess neighborhood-level and regional health effects of transportation initiatives.
Dr. Ukegbu joined NYC DOT in 1998 and worked in various roles within the agency, including as Chief of Planning, Executive Director for Policy, Technology & Management Analysis, and Deputy Bronx Borough Commissioner, before becoming Assistant Commissioner for Regional and Strategic Planning in 2015. In this role, he led initiatives spanning equity research, freight innovation, curb operations and analytics, and zero-emission vehicle programs. He pioneered efforts to Re-imagine the Cross Bronx Expressway, supervised the freight strategic plan Delivering NY, and expanded the NYC Clean Trucks Program — growing the freight team from three to twenty staff and advancing initiatives adopted as mitigations for the congestion pricing program.
Prior to working at NYC DOT, he began his public sector career in 1991 as a Transportation Analyst at New York State Department of Transportation and rose to be the Regional Mobility Program Manager leading Strategic Deployment Planning for Intelligent Transportation Systems in NYC.
A scholar-practitioner, Dr. Ukegbu holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Phoenix. His 2007 dissertation examined the spatial relationship between air pollution and student absenteeism in environmental justice communities. He also holds master's degrees in Transportation Planning & Engineering from New York University and Transportation Geography from University of Ilorin, Nigeria, the latter being his springboard to a university lecturing career before immigrating to the United States in 1989.
Since 2003, Dr. Ukegbu has been an adjunct Professor of Geography and Behavioral Sciences at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, Brooklyn, mentoring students in social and environmental justice. Dr. Ukegbu has lived in Queens, New York for nearly four decades.