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David Bragdon became enamored by transportation as a toddler, when trains first captured his imagination. One of his earliest school papers, written during elementary school, was even titled, “Transportation.” And, as a 14-year-old intern for TriMet, Bragdon wrote the transit agency’s first guide to riding buses in the Portland metro area.

“My interest was first inspired by my dad taking me to Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station in New York City, where we lived at the time,” he said.

Bragdon’s family moved to Oregon when he was 12. The oldest of three kids, Bragdon attended Catlin Gabel School, where he was involved in theater and student government. He graduated in 1974 and went on to Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in government. He wrote his master’s thesis in American history at Reed College.

During the course of his career, Bragdon has witnessed transportation in action from just about every possible perspective. He spent the first decade of his professional life working exclusively in the industry’s private sector.

“Transportation has continued to hold my interest (aside from my primitive interest in big-things-which-move) because transportation is one sector of the economy which touches just about every other sector,” he said.

In 1983, he established Nike’s first office in Singapore. Bragdon went on to work as a maritime chartering agent at Lasco Shipping Co., managing Oregon lumber shipments to Japan. He also represented Evergreen International Airlines in India and what was then the Soviet Union. For five years, he served as marine marketing manager at the Port of Portland.

“I’ve always known I would work in the transportation field and I liked international trade as well. So going onto the Metro Council was sort of a natural fit,” he said.

Bragdon, who served as a district councilor from 1999-2002, worked as a weekend cabbie to supplement his income during the first year because the councilor job was part time.

“I can still envision just about every intersection and arterial in the entire region and know my way around pretty well to this day,” he said. “In addition to the weekly lessons in geography and traffic, I learned a lot about our society.”

Voters elected Bragdon president of the Metro Council in 2002, and then re-elected him to a second four-year term in 2006.Under his leadership, Metro has allocated land for greenspaces, tackled the often thorny issue of regional transportation planning, and developed an award-winning recycling program, with notable success in recycling commercial construction waste.

Bragdon, whose term as Metro Council president ends in 2011, said he has not yet made plans for what he will do beyond then. While there have been plenty of challenges along the way, he can easily cite what he loves most about his work.

“Probably the best thing about my job is the other people I get to work with, as well as the variety of issue areas within our agency, ranging from running a zoo to planning for the future.”

Who was a mentor who helped shape you into the person you are today? What did that person teach you?

“I really enjoy reading about Abraham Lincoln, and he’s a mentor in a historical sense. He was a great, practical politician who was able to persist and achieve high moral outcomes.”

Tell us something about yourself that most people might not know.

“I attended the first game the New York Mets played at Shea Stadium in 1964 and their last game there in 2007.”