Colorado/Wyoming
The Colorado/Wyoming Section of ITE had a busy summer! The Section kicked off the summer with our annual golf tournament on Friday, June 26th at the West Woods Golf Club. There were 82 players at this year’s Colorado/Wyoming Section golf tournament, and generous donations from our sponsors made for some great prizes and allowed us to raise well over $300 for the scholarship fund. The winning team included Mike Harmer, Skip Hlad, Chris Paiz, and John Sabo. A special thanks to the golf committee: John Seyer, Craig Faessler, Eric Boivin, John Muscatel, Scot Lewis, and Jeff Ream.
Our Section hosted the Western District Annual meeting at the Sheraton Denver Hotel from July 12th through the 15th. This meeting had attendees from all thirteen states in our district, as well as national and international representatives. The highlights of the three day conference included a keynote address by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems, a multi-track technical program, vendor exhibits, poster sessions, a pub crawl, family night at Elitch Gardens, and an Awards banquet.
The University of Wyoming received the “Student Chapter Award” for the second consecutive year. Their team also won the inaugural Student Traffic Bowl.
Chuck Huffine, Stantec, received the “Best Annual Meeting Paper Award.”
The Colorado/Wyoming section contributed $5,000 to the District 6 Student Endowment Fund.
The Local Arrangements Committee was co-chaired by Nate Larson and Will Johnson. Other Committee members included: John LaSala, Alex Ariniello, Aaron Heumann, Kari McDowell, Paul Brown, Jamie Archambeau, Margie Krell, Sara Karjala, Larry Corcoran and Rhonda Young.
The Colorado/Wyoming Section 2009-2010 election results have been announced. Ben Waldman – Section President, Greg MacKinnon – Vice President, and Christopher Sheffer – Secretary/Treasurer. In addition, Sara Karjala has joined the Executive Committee as our new Activity Report coordinator. The Legislative Committee Chair position is still vacant. If you are interested, please contact Ben Waldman.
Our first Section luncheon of the season will be held on September 18th at the DTC Embassy Suites. Registration is available at www.cowyite.org. In addition to the business meeting, Bill Van Meter, RTD, will be updating us on FasTracks. The Executive Committee has designated this luncheon as our 2009 “Public Employee Appreciation Luncheon.” All public employees are invited to attend for a discounted price of $15 for ITE members and $20 for non members.
Kari J. McDowell
San Francisco Bay Area
On September 17, 2009, high speed rail (HSR) in California was the focus at the SF Bay Area ITE Section’s (SFBayITE) first meeting of the year, held at Osha Thai restaurant in San Francisco. Meeting sponsorship was generously provided by Sensys Networks and National Data Services (NDS). Ray Schreiber of Sensys and Bernadette Gilbey of NDS gave brief presentations introducing both firms.
Randy McCourt, District 6 (WesternITE) International Director, kicked off the meeting by swearing in the new SFBayITE Board members: Nate Chanchareon (President), Shruti Malik (Vice President), Kamala Parks (Treasurer), and Mousa Abbasi (Secretary). Following this ceremony, Past President Rich Haygood then presented Wing Lok, the newest Past President, with a special plaque honoring his service to the Section as President over the past year.
New President Nate Chanchareon followed with additional Section announcements. Nate introduced two newly appointed Section board members: Bhanu Kala, Sponsorship Co-Chair and Jin Wang, Co-Web Administrator. In addition, at the recent 2009 ITE Western District Annual Meeting in Denver, SFBayITE was named Best Large Section in the District based on the Section’s Annual Report detailing 2008 events (see: http://www.sfbayite.org/annualreport/). Finally, Nate announced that Dalene Whitlock was elected Western District International Director in Denver.
Rod Diridon, Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University and a local champion of HSR in California, began the main presentations with an overview of the proposed California HSR system. He first provided project context, noting the numerous HSR systems already operating Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Italy, Spain, and other countries. California HSR is currently one-third of the way through program-level environmental clearance. The envisioned HSR system would be a 790-mile, double tracked system capable of 220 miles per hour (mph) maximum speed, with an expected trip time of 2 hours 40 minutes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The full system is expected to be in revenue service by 2030.
Next, Camille Tsao, Manager of Planning in Northern California for HNTB Corporation, discussed Caltrain’s plans for commuter rail along the Peninsula corridor, which Caltrain will share with future HSRA project-level environmental impact report (EIR) is currently underway and expected to be complete by early 2011.
George Mazur of Cambridge Systematics concluded the technical presentations with an overview of the California HSR system ridership and revenue forecasts. A travel model consisting of intrastate travel was constructed. Forecast results show a large travel market for commute trips of 100 miles or less, for example between San Francisco and Fresno/Central Valley. It was also projected that in magnitude, many of the future HSR stations in 2030 would rival the Burbank Airport in weekday boardings. Expected sources of HSR ridership are 74 percent from auto, 18 percent from air travel, 7 percent from conventional rail, and one percent from diverted/induced demand. Typical HSR systems are very competitive to other modes at the 250-400 mile trip distance range, with autos being more competitive at less than 250 miles and air travel more competitive at greater than 400 miles. The HSR system’s distance between the cities of SF and LA will be about 375 miles, placing this system in the “sweet spot” in terms of competitive advantage with auto and air travel.
Andrew Kluter
