And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor...

In the last two weeks, Edwards and Kelcey, Inc., merged with the Jacobs Engineering Group.

The Minneapolis office will be know as "JACOBS Edwards and Kelcey." Other offices will be known by other names. For instance, the Chicago office will keep the name "Edwards and Kelcey", while other offices will change to "Jacobs Engineering Group".

Certification News...

From the ITE Executive Digest (April 23, 2007):

The Transportation Professional Certification Board™ (TPCB) is pleased to announce that nearly 2,000 transportation professionals have received Professional Traffic Operations Engineer™ (PTOE) certifications. TPCB offers PTOE certification, as well as Professional Transportation Planner™ (PTP), Traffic Operations Practitioner Specialist (TOPS) and Traffic Signal Operations Specialist™ (TSOS).

The TPCB is seeking cities to hold the PTOE, PTP, TOPS and TSOS exams on Saturday, October 20, 2007. For a location to be considered there needs to be an expression of interest for 20 or more persons who would like to sit for any one of the above listed certification exams. If a city is chosen, all arrangements for the test site and the proctors are made by the TPCB’s testing consultant. For more information, contact TPCB at +1 202-289-0222 or via e-mail at certification@ite.org

(NOTE: NCITE has submitted a request to host the exams in the Twin Cities in October.)

NCITE Section Meeting...

I deliverd an ITE update to the NCITE April Seciton Meeting last week. I provided an update about ITE professional development activities as well as to provide members with informatin on the upcoming Midwestern District Meeting in St. Louis and the ITE Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

San Diego Debriefing...

After two weeks of catching up at work, I can finally file my report on my trip to the San Diego Technical Conference and Exhibit.

Between March 23 and March 28, 2007, I traveled to San Diego, CA, to attend the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Technical Conference and Exhibit at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina. I arrived on Friday, March 23, in order to attend the ITE International Board of Direction Meeting held in conjunction with the conference. The Board Meeting lasted Friday and Saturday.

The Board Meeting involved a lot of discussion on ITE public relations, as well as membership recruitment, retention, and reinstatement. Additional funds were authorized for staff to promote these efforts. There was addiitonal discussion of ITE staffing changes and succession planning. The ITE website was addressed regarding the level of information that should be provided. The Transportation Professional Certification Board was discussed regarding the potential for additional certification activities. The Board approived two new Honorary Members of ITE -- Brian Bochner of Texas, and Andy O'Brien from Australia. Both will be formally recognized at the Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

The theme of the Technical Conference was Congestion. The conference began with a keynote address from Tyler Duvall, Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy from the USDOT in Washington, DC. Mr. Duvall spoke about the need for a strategic focus on congestion rather than mobility. He also stated that there needs to be a major federal role to stimulate transportation initiatives at the metropolitan level. He ended with the view that we are on the cusp of seeing an alignment of special interest groups working toward congestion management. He also highlighted the website, http://www.fightgridlocknow.gov/.

Another speaker, Tim Lomax, from the Texas Transportation Institute, stated that congestion reliability is important in measuring congestion. Drivers will accept a certain level of congestion delay as long as they can plan for it. Drivers have less tolerance for unexpected delay. Both early and late arrivals have costs. Forty percent of all congestion is created by bottlenecks, while other congestion is created by weather, special events, etc.

Other speakers included Ted Trepanier of the Washington DOT, who discussed several performance measures his state uses to measure congestion – duration, extent, severity, reliability, travel time, delay, volume, etc. Other topics covered included signal timing strategies, multimodal congestion mitigation, land use strategies, etc.

Minnesota Supreme Court Nixes PhotoCop...

Minneapolis can't use cameras to bust red-light runners, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday, but city officials vowed to continue pressing lawmakers to legalize the PhotoCop system.
The court concluded the system violates state law because it targets vehicle owners, whether or not they were behind the wheel when cameras captured their vehicles blowing through red lights.

http://www.twincities.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=5605113&siteId=569

UPS Drivers Turn Right for Efficiency...

UPS plots its delivery routes to make as many right turns as possible. In a world where half the driving choices are left turns, they avoid turning left... UPS managers used to get out and drive the routes, plotting on maps how they could be efficiently driven turning mostly right. Now they have a combination of not just experience, but computers, codes and programming that allows them to plot out right-turn routes in minutes.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=3005890