About

Hi everyone — I’m Mike Iswalt. Thanks for visiting mikeiswalt.com and exploring the apps I’ve created with the help of generative AI.

I’ve been a consultant for over 20 years in transportation engineering, urban planning, and economics in the Bay Area.

What I Do

In planning and engineering consulting, clients hire us to solve problems and answer questions such as:

What is the nature of the problem?
How is the system impacted — is it an issue with demand, capacity, or both?
What infrastructure should we build, or what policy should we implement?

To answer these questions, we develop forecasts, analyze options, and assess their benefits and costs. This is the core analytical approach behind much of the work.

Why Tools Matter

Throughout my career, I’ve focused on making these analyses as accessible as possible — not just to clients, but to stakeholders such as state DOTs, transit agencies, cities, and the public.

Accessibility is key to building trust in results and ensuring that decision-makers truly understand the tradeoffs behind recommendations.

To support this, I’ve increasingly focused on developing tools built on open-source software and delivered through the web — rather than dense PDF reports or bespoke desktop applications.