President’s Message

Let me start by again thanking Dennis Acuna for a successful year. With his actions, we finally completed an update to our Section’s By-Laws, which aligns us more with District 6.

I also want to thank everyone who participated and voted at our Annual Business meeting in June, and want to welcome Dowling Tsai from Riverside County as a new board member. This year we plan to implement the same electronic voting system that District 6 currently uses. This will allow for a much greater voting opportunity for our RSBITE members. Speaking of our members, we continue to maintain an all time high level of membership of 143 members, as well as great participation at our meetings.

RSBITE covers a large geographic area, and we will continue to select meeting locations within the two counties. Our first meeting was held on September 16, at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Rancho Cucamonga, with a presentation by Paul Rodriguez regarding the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Transportation Plan.

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV) provide a low speed, zero emission transportation option that can assist communities and regions in improving mobility while reducing carbon-based vehicle emissions and related pollution. The Western Riverside Council of Governments 4-City NEV Transportation Plan presents a multi-jurisdiction transportation planning approach to leverage existing and future public street networks for maximum transportation benefit. This Plan identifies low speed connectors and potential NEV/bike lane backbone facilities within and between the cities of Corona, Norco, Riverside, and Moreno Valley. The plan will also benefit unincorporated communities within the study area. Funding of this project was provided by the Southern California Association of Governments’ Compass Blueprint Demonstration Project Program. Compass Blueprint assists Southern California cities and other organizations in evaluating planning options and stimulating development consistent with the region’s goals.

The Board’s focus for this year will be: to continue to broaden our membership base from not only traffic engineers (or perceived as), but include a cross section of transportation professionals; introducing more Joint Meetings to increase our recognition in the profession; and as always, introduce interesting and relevant topics and speakers at our meetings.

Thank you.

Craig Schneider, PE, TE, PTOE

President RSBITE