Over 40-year career, OKI’s Bob Koehler has transformed transportation for region’s two million residents

For four decades, Bob Koehler has quietly helped shape how two million residents move through the tri-state.

You may not recognize his name, but if you’ve walked or biked a trail, ridden a bus, crossed a bridge, circled a roundabout, driven on the SR 71-MLK Interchange or myriad other roads, you’ve benefited from Koehler’s work and wisdom.

As deputy executive director of the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI), Koehler oversees all transportation planning functions within the agency.

For 25 years, he has directed three major initiatives — two of them channeling tens of millions of dollars each year to local communities: OKI’s Metropolitan Transportation Plan, the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), and the agency’s Work Program.

“One of the first decisions