Kim Named FHWA Deputy Administrator

President Obama and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx have named David Kim deputy administrator at the Federal Highway Administration.

 Kim speaking at TransComm meeting.

Administrator Greg Nadeau announced the appointment in a Feb. 8 message to agency employees. Kim has been the FHWA’s associate administrator for policy and governmental affairs since August 2011. Before that he spent two years as the USDOT’s deputy assistant secretary for governmental affairs.

Kim’s promotion was the second change in recent months in the FHWA’s senior staff. In October Nadeau made Anthony Furst the agency’s acting executive director to manage its day-to-day operations and workforce of 2,900. Furst had been associate administrator of the FHWA’s Office of Safety since January 2012, and before that headed its Office of Freight Management and Operations.

While Kim was associate administrator, Nadeau said he was a principal adviser and provided “executive leadership and direction for a team of 75 career employees involved in transportation policy development, legislative analysis, highway data collection and analysis, and international programs.”

In particular, the agency CEO said Kim had formulated policy proposals for the administration’s “Grow America” surface transportation legislative offering, “and led aggressive efforts to expeditiously implemented highway provisions in MAP-21 and the FAST Act.”

Kim was also the USDOT’s representative to the Interagency Working Group of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

He has represented the agency before various groups, including the 2015 annual meeting of TransComm – AASHTO’s Subcommittee on Transportation Communications.

Nadeau said he has already “taken on many day-to-day responsibilities of the deputy administrator over the past 26 months.” In the deputy role, Kim will chair the newly formed policy council, and Nadeau said he had played a critical role in its creation.