Dalene J. Whitlock, P.E., PTOE Western District International Director

The International Board of Direction met in advance of the recent Spring Technical Conference in Pasadena, CA.  International Directors Dalene Whitlock, Michael Sanderson and Monica Suter, as well as International President Rock Miller and Vice-President Zaki Mustafa, were in attendance from the Western District.  Following are highlights of the two-day meeting.

• In order to provide members with more timely information as well as a platform for communicating with their peers, all members have been “signed up” for ITE Community.  This interactive service is intended to increase dialogue among members and add value to member services.
• ITE has entered an agreement with Transoft to create a searchable trip generation database that incorporates aspects such as pass-by and internal capture.  The 9th Edition will be published about mid-year in hard copy, and it is anticipated that this will not conflict with the software version.  Users will be able to add data that they have developed and wish to keep “private” and create output tables for use in their own products that look just like what’s in the manual.
• Three of ITE’s publications (Traffic Engineering Handbook, Transportation Planning Handbook, Trip Generation Handbook) will be updated in the next year.  Separate panels will be convened to define the content of each of these publications to ensure that they are timely, relevant, well-organized and accurate.  These panels will be given broad latitude in providing recommendations for improving each publication, including consideration to convert publications to e-books.
• Resources are being allocated to determine what additional professional development programs are needed and develop them, including materials regarding pedestrian and bicycle facilities (planning, design, funding).
• ITE’s finances have been hit by the loss of members, so help is needed from every level of the Institute to find members who aren’t current on their membership and encourage them to re-join.  Headquarters will be working with Section and Chapter Membership Chairs, in particular, to provide the information and tools they need to reach out to these members.
• HQ Staff is working on short briefing papers that cover topics of interest to transportation professionals and that can be used to assist in obtaining funding, as well as in presenting information to policy makers, stake holders, etc.  Some of the topics that will be covered include accessible design, bicycle facilities, safety treatments, pedestrian safety, incident management, and adaptive traffic control systems.
• The Board voted to make changes to the procedure for nominating and electing the International Vice President.  The changes modify the time lines so that the petition process would end 30 days after the candidates are announced, make the petitioning requirements more stringent, eliminate campaign travel except within the candidate’s District and to TRB and the Spring Technical Conference, post the speech made at the Spring Conference on the website, close the election 3-4 weeks after the Spring Conference, give the nominating committee greater charge to solicit candidates, and have two candidates unless there is not a second qualified nominee.  Moving the election up to January will require a vote of the membership. 
• Michael Sanderson, who is chairing the Leadership ITE Task Force, discussed the work of the task force to implement a program to develop future leaders of the Institute.  They have developed an outline of their work plan, including how to identify and engage participants and the series of workshops and webinars that they would participate in as well as the staffing required and some ideas about marketing the program.