 |
  |
||||||||
 |
|
  |
 |
  |
Messages from the President New Mexico Section ITE Members, Students and Affiliates, Greetings from Denver, Colorado, where the ITE Western District 2009 Annual Meeting just concluded a short time ago. But before I get into the news and highlights from the district meeting, it is my pleasure to announce the results of our own New Mexico Section election. Your 2009-2010 officers will be: Ross Lujan—President, Kristal Metro—Vice President, and Paul Barricklow—Secretary/Treasurer. Congratulations to all, and thanks to each of you for your commitment to serve our section members. The first highlight from the Western District Annual Meeting is that at the awards banquet last night, the New Mexico Section was awarded this year's prize for Best Website! We received an attractive trophy topped with a computer hard drive. I'll get a photo of it posted to our prize-winning www.nmite.org website soon. Kudos to Website Committee Chair Eric Hawton from HDR, and especially to Becky Lowe at Bohannan-Huston, Inc. who designed our website and who keeps it up-to-date. Thanks also to BHI for hosting it on their server. The Colorado/Wyoming Section hosted a great conference this year, with the perfect mix of technical sessions, professional networking, district business, and fun social activities in the "after hours". Attending the District Meeting from New Mexico were myself, Karen Aspelin (District Technical Committee Chair), Steve Eagan (District Legislative Committee Chair), Jerry Hall, Edward Cordova, Kurt Thorson, and Anthony Cabrera. In the opening session, ITE International President Ken Voight spoke about Energy, Environment, and the Economy as a mega-issue on which ITE will focus in the near term. Ken said that he has formed a task force to address this mega-issue, as well as another task force on Roundabouts, which relates to the mega-issue of Transportation Safety. Technical committes have been formed to work on the topics of Speed Management and Yellow-Red Clearance Intervals. Look for work coming out from these task foces and technical committes in coming months in the ITE Journal, www.ite.com , ITE webinars, and conference topics. Ken also highlighted the effort by ITE to keep in touch with members via new communications, to be more affordable during these difficult economic times. In addition to email newletters, more and reduced-cost web seminars, and live webcasts of annual conferences, Ken invites you to friend him on Facebook and to follow him and ITE on Twitter. At the annual business luncheon, the new District Officers were announced: Michael Sanderson—President, Edgar Perez—Vice President, and Alyssa Reynolds—Secretary/Treasurer. This new board was sworn in during the Western States Luncheon today. Dalene Whitlock was elected to a three-year term as International Director from the Western District, and will be sworn into office in Washington DC at the start of the new year. Dalene joins our continuing International Directors Zaki Mustafa (2008-2010) and Ken Ackeret (2009-2011). The only dissappointing news from the annual meeting was that New Mexico Section failed to hit stride in this year's Traffic Bowl Competition, going down in flames in the first round. Karen rocked the traffic signal timing questions, Steve, Edward, Kurt and I knew most of our public transit acronyms, but apparently we need to brush up on our AASHTO knowledge. And even though Karen purchased a round of beers for the judges at the start of our round, they ruled against us in calling the Denver pedestrian scramble phase a "Barn Dance" instead of a "Barnes Dance." We were also unable to name the title of Henry Barnes' 1965 autobiography in the final question. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Barnes_(traffic_engineer) for the correct answer.) Our neighbors in Arizona Section made a runaway finish to first place over Northern California and Southern California sections in the final. Enjoy the rest of your summer, and then plan to come to our first luncheon meeting of the new NMITE year on Thursday, September 3rd at El Pinto. New Western District President Michael Sanderson will be coming from Montana to swear in our new officers. Michael will also present the technical topic, "Sustainability: What Does it Mean to Transportation Professionals?" Signing off from Denver,  June 6, 2009 New Mexico Section ITE Members and Affiliates, I was pleased to see another good turnout at this month's section meeting on Thursday, our last regular luncheon before the summer break and before our new officers-to-be take charge in September. How quickly this year's series of meetings went by. I admit that some sweat was shed each month trying to book interesting speakers, but it was fun. Who would have imagined that our line-up would include a cyclist, an architect, a lawyer, and a czar, not to mention our own members Tony Abbo and David Wilson, whom I again thank for their presentations. For the many of you who missed our UNM students in May, you can go to our website to view the presentations by Emmy Foley, Trent Simpler, and Bryan Estvanko. In addition, I would like to give honorable mention recognition to the other students submitting papers this year: Jim Ellis, Jenny Seder, John Pavlakos, Anthony Cabrera, Andrea Trujillo, Leslie Romero, and Krishna Doddikadi. Keep all our talented student chapter members in mind when you're looking to fill that intern position. Regarding our website, Craig Watts was vigilant in keeping an eye on the cyber-squatters occupying the nmite.org domain. Apparently, they grew tired of holding it since we had no intention of paying them for it, so they gave up. Craig quickly snatched it back up, and our entire website is available there now. We are maintaining the nmite.com domain for a while in the transition, but both URLs will connect you to the same site. I would also like to thank Bohannan Huston, Inc. for hosting our section website over the past few years. Becky Lowe at BHI is our most helpful webmaster. It's now election season for all levels of ITE. We devoted most of this month's luncheon agenda to covering the three elections pending. For our New Mexico Section, two members have stepped up to run for Secretary-Treasurer: Paul Barricklow and Albert Ruiz. Their candidate statements will be included in the ballot mailings going out next week. In addition, Ross Lujan is the nominee for Section President, and Kristal Metro is the nominee for Vice President. Ballots must be returned by Monday, July 6. Online elections for the Western District will run from June 10 to July 13, and for ITE International July 1 - 23. Go to the westernite.org and ite.org websites for information on those races and candidates. Our annual summer field trip is now scheduled! On Thursday, July 9, we will be heading out to see what's taking shape on Mesa del Sol, currently the largest urban master-planned development in the U.S. Representatives from Forest City Covington will be hosting us in their new Aperture Center Building designed by world-renowned architect and New Mexico native Antoine Predock. Their presentation will cover sustainability and transportation master planning for the 12,900 acre development. Consulting engineers from Bohannan Huston Inc. and URS Corporation will cover specific aspects of the transportation design, and Parsons Brinckerhoff will discuss the proposed I-25 Mesa del Sol interchange. Look for a meeting announcement and further details in coming days. The following week, a number of us will be heading to Denver for the Western District Annual Meeting, July 12 -15. If you are planning on attending, please send me a note so that we can connect there and get a Traffic Bowl team together for Tuesday afternoon. Also, we'll have at least one student, Anthony Cabrera, attending, and I hope that we can all take the time to show him around and introduce him to the folks in our district. If anyone is aware of other students from New Mexico planning to attend, please let me know. I will be arriving on Saturday and attending the District Board Meeting all day Sunday, so look for me at the social hour thereafter on Sunday evening. At the District Board Meeting, I will have a couple items on the agenda for the New Mexico Section. First, I will be inviting one of the District officers out to our meeting at El Pinto on September 3 to swear in our newly elected slate of section officers, and to give us an update from the District and ITE International. Second (and more exciting), I will officially offer New Mexico's bid to host the 2017 Western District Annual Meeting in Albuquerque! As some of you may recall, New Mexico hosted the District Meeting in 1985 under the chairmanship of Dr. Jerry Hall, and again in 2001 under the chairmanship of Karen Aspelin. If you do the math, it seems that our 16-year cycle will bring us due in 2017. That will fit well into the series already taking shape: 2009 Denver, 2010 San Francisco, 2011 Anchorage, 2012 Ventura, 2013 Phoenix, 2014 Seattle (joint International), 2015 unassigned, 2016 Anaheim (joint International), 2017 Albuquerque. Planning would begin in earnest in 2013 with the formation of a Local Arrangements Committee, so we have plenty of time to get prepared. I'll make the pitch to the Board and report back to you all after the meeting. Thanks to all of you who help make the New Mexico Section the best in the west. See you at our field trip, and have a great summer. James Barrera, P.E. PTOE MITE September 26, 2009 Looking at the Past Presidents list in our section directory, I see a “who’s who” of New Mexico transportation engineers who have made important contributions to our profession. It also strikes me that the majority of our past presidents remain active in our section. I am honored to have been sworn in as your Section President at the September meeting. Traveling to Anaheim to attend the ITE Western District and International Meeting was exciting and inspiring. The New Mexico Section is going strong with an active membership, as evidenced by all the New Mexico faces I saw participating there. We made a strong showing in the Traffic Bowl again this year, and the stage is set for us to unseat the Colorado/Wyoming Section on their home turf in Denver in July. This year, I will strive to improve communications with the section membership. It is sometimes difficult for us to attend the monthly luncheons due to our many other commitments, and for some, the distances to travel. I will work with the officers and chairs to keep all the members informed of section news and activities through the website and e-newsletters. This year, we will complete the process begun last year of establishing an educational endowment for the section. The endowment will be used to facilitate educational activities and programs for our members and for students. Throughout the year, we should all look for opportunities to reach out to students and draw them into participation in the section. The endowment committee is well underway, and I will provide further updates on the progress in coming messages. This year’s officers and committee chairpersons are always looking for ideas and suggestions on how we can better serve our members. Please contact any one of us and let us know what you think. James Barrera, P.E. PTOE MITE |
||
Home | Calendar | Membership | Employment | Links | Student Chapter | Presentations
Website provided by Bohannan Huston, Inc.