The ITE Western District recently release the 2022 Request for Proposals (RFP) for Student Projects. This year’s RFP is focused on STEM outreach projects, instead of the traditional trip generation data collection project. However, the SLO student chapter project team needs a professional mentor who can work with them.
This is a great opportunity for the SLO student chapter to earn some money to support their chapter activities (up to four student chapters will be awarded $1,000 each).
Proposals will need to be sent to the Western District by Friday December 17 at 5pm Pacific Time. If you are interested in learning more or assisting the SLO student chapter please contact Jason Ng, Chapter Secretary.
Caltrans District 5 is hosting a Job Fair at the District Office in the San Luis Obispo parking lot on Wednesday, October 20th, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
Attendees can apply in person at the event and there will be plenty of staff that can help answer their questions.
The City of Menlo Park recently completed a Transportation Master Plan (TMP), outlining a multimodal vision for its future mobility by identifying projects, priorities, and a strategy for moving forward. The TMP was built upon four goals that were established in the city’s General Plan: Safety; Congestion Management; Mobility Choice; and Sustainability. The TMP enables the City to take a more strategic and comprehensive approach to implementing a multimodal vision, and to better understand how chosen investments help achieve their vision for a multimodal future. The project included an assessment of transportation operations, robust public engagement, reconciliation of proposed transportation improvements to a common baseline, formation of unified recommendations based on input from a Steering Committee, identification of funding partnerships and grant opportunities, and formation of a Plan that now serves as a blueprint for City decision making going forward. This presentation will cover lessons learned and how the integration of policies, funding mechanisms and public engagement elevated a list of projects into a plan that can be implemented.
About the Presenter:
Mark Spencer is one of the two ITE Western District International Directors. He is a Senior Principal and Vice President of W-Trans. He manages the firm’s Oakland office, focuses on traffic analysis for multi-disciplinary projects, and excels at community engagement. He is registered in California as a Traffic Engineer.
Mark holds a B. Eng. in Civil Engineering from McGill University and an M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been working as a consultant in the Bay Area since 1990, and joined W-Trans in 2011. His work includes managing a wide array of transportation planning projects, from EIRs and Specific Plans to parking studies and neighborhood traffic management plans. He is often invited to present projects before community forums and elected officials, and is recognized for his ability to present technical topics to both general and professional audiences. When asked what he does for a living, Mark will typically respond that, through transportation, he works to make communities better, safer and more livable. He also enjoys his role in mentoring and training staff.
12pm-1pm: Presentation from from the California Bicycle Coalition (CalBike) on policies/bills that CalBike supports.
About the Presentation:
Jared Sanchez from the California Bicycle Coalition (CalBike) will present on policies/bills that CalBike supports. One of the bills that will be covered is the Bicycle Safety Stop Bill (AB 122), which legalizes a stop as a yield for bikes. A jaywalking repeal bill (AB 1238) will also be covered.
About the Presenter:
Jared Sanchez has a background in policy research, rooted in social justice, that connects to grassroots power to achieve transformative policy goals. His work at CalBike focuses on building connections with community-based justice-centered organizations across California, and connecting bicycling, and sustainable transportation more generally, with intersecting issues such as housing, climate, and environmental justice. Prior to CalBike, Jared worked in the social justice research space for 10 years focusing on issues of immigrant integration, regional equity and racial desegregation
11am-12pm: ITE Announcements & The Railroad Safety Trail (RRST) presentation by Bryan Wheeler, City of San Luis Obispo
12pm-1pm: Social – Transportation Trivia
About the Presentation:
The Railroad Safety Trail (RRST) has long been one of the highest-priority multimodal transportation projects in the City of San Luis Obispo (City)—a crosstown, dedicated facility for pedestrians and bicyclists connecting the southern City limits north to California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). Over the past two decades, approximately 40 percent of the total four-mile trail has been completed and existing portions of the trail are enjoyed by over 1,000 pedestrians and cyclists per day.
The portion currently under construction extends from Taft Street (current end) to Pepper Street. Once completed, it will encompass about 0.4 miles, from the existing trail alignment to the edge of the downtown core. The segment will run along the west side of California Boulevard, near Taft Street, stretching south across the existing Highway 101 overcrossing. The segment then shifts away from California Boulevard behind the California Highway Patrol (CHP) property to a new bicycle/pedestrian bridge crossing over the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) and connects Phillips Lane to Pepper Street. Construction began in November of 2020, and is expected to be completed in September of 2021.
Bryan Wheeler has been a Transportation Planner / Engineer working for the City of San Luis Obispo since 2012. He graduated from Cal Poly in City and Reginal Planning in 2009, and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Civil Engineering form Cal Poly, graduating in June. His professional interests are traffic safety, sustainable transportation infrastructure, railway engineering, and traffic signal optimization.
About the Social:
The social portion of the joint meeting will utilize breakout rooms to split students and transportation professionals into groups for some transportation trivia.
Beginning this year the Section has a new Membership Committee chaired by Faridur Rahman. The following update on current membership was provided at the Section Board Meeting in March:
As of March, 2021 ITE Central Coast Section has 129 total members. Members are broken down into several categories: student members, younger members, members, fellow members, and retired members. All membership levels are ITE International members and Section only membership is no longer provided.
In 2020 Central Coast Section added 11 new members. In 2021 we added 7 new members in the first two months of the year. Majority of members added this current year are students members from Cal Poly Student Chapter.
From the desk (and kitchen table) of the President:
Welcome to the ITE Central Coast Section!
A silver lining of the Pandemic’s challenges has been the ability to reach more members by using a virtual environment for our meetings. Even after our Section resumes in-person meetings, virtual and hybrid events will play an important role in keeping us connected along the Central Coast. We all know that transportation is essential and that the work we do has a profound effect on the public. I encourage you to explore all the ways ITE can enhance your professional development and connect you with others.
The ITE Diversity Scholars Program supports increased diversity at the undergraduate level by increasing underrepresented populations participation in the transportation profession. There are four cornerstones to this program:
Financial support (a total of up to $20,000 in scholarship support: up to $4,000 annually per student for up to 5 years of undergraduate enrollment)
ITE Student Chapter engagement
Mentoring
Internship Opportunities
This scholorship program is open to any U.S. high school student of African-American; Native American, Alaskan, and Hawaiian; or Hispanic/Latino heritage with an interest in a career in transportation seeking to study transportation engineering, planning, or related-field at a school with an established ITE Student Chapter.
ITE Central Coast Section 