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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2002: article | |
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Transportation professionals share best practices By Deborah A. Benedetti | ||||||||
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More than 575 transportation professionals from throughout Pennsylvania, the mid-Atlantic states and the nation gathered at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel for the seventh annual Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference. Dr. David N. Wormley, dean of Penn State’s College of Engineering, welcomed participants to the conference. “This is a unique opportunity for transportation professionals to share the very best practices for safety and discuss the critical issues and problems they face,” he said. Wormley related how some improvements transportation professionals make may seem small, but they can have a significant impact. He pointed to new construction signs now being used in Pennsylvania, such as “Slow Down — My Mommy (or Daddy) Works Here,” as having a positive influence on drivers. “People say they are more aware of construction zones than they used to be,” he said. “So we are making progress in both small and large ways.” In his remarks, Thomas Bryer, director of the Bureau of Highway Safety and Traffic Engineering for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, called the Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference “a quality conference that keeps on getting better each year.” Bryer related the history of the conference. During a meeting with Dr. John M. Mason Jr., associate dean and professor of civil engineering at Penn State, about a research project they were working on, someone at the meeting brought out a postcard advertising Illinois’ 41st Transportation Engineering Conference. Bryer said Mason talked about how he had been trying to develop a similar conference for Pennsylvania for several years. That discussion led Bryer and Mason to develop the first Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference in 1995. “One of the first things we did was form a steering committee to guide planning for the conference,” Bryer said. “We decided to have the conference at Penn State, because of the great facilities of The Penn Stater Conference Center.” The first conference drew about 200 transportation professionals. There were 10 sessions, but no workshops. By comparison, the most recent conference brought together nearly 600 people and offered 32 sessions and six workshops. Penn State Continuing Education’s Conferences and Institutes assisted the College of Engineering in planning and delivering the conference. “We’re really growing,” Bryer said. “The conference has exceeded our expectations for attendance, quality and feedback. It’s a success, because the quality of the sessions continues to improve each year, and because we listen to our customers. Penn State also provides a conference coordinator from Conferences and Institutes who ensures the conference runs smoothly, and we’ve always had outstanding coordinators. The conference is well on its way to being institutionalized.” The challenge for future conferences is to accommodate the growing number of professionals who attend, while also opening the conference to other transportation stakeholders, such as municipal transportation officials and technicians, he said. Dr. Kevin M. Mahoney, senior research associate with Penn State’s College of Engineering, said, “The conference integrates our mission elements of education, research and service, while providing visibility for Penn State’s leadership in the areas of transportation engineering and safety.” The conference focused on four areas: transportation safety, transportation engineering, human factors in transportation, and intelligent transportation systems and advanced technologies. Conference participants also had the opportunity to enroll in one of six education and training workshops held prior to the start of the conference. Topics were ITE’s Professional Traffic Operations Engineer Refresher Course; Traffic Calming; Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices: Review of 2000 Edition Updates; Crash Reconstruction; Synchro and SimTraffic: Tools for Traffic Signal Timing Analysis, Optimization and Simulation; and Transportation Resources on the World Wide Web. In addition, there was a transportation technology exhibition, where vendors displayed some of the latest technologies and services available in the transportation field. Outside the conference center, Roadway Express trucking company set up a tractor-trailer exhibit to demonstrate what truck drivers can and cannot see while driving. Conference participants had opportunities to talk with a truck driver and sit in the truck to better understand the “no zone” or blind spots truck drivers experience. Eric Donnell, research assistant in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, served as conference coordinator for the Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference. Sponsors included the College of Engineering, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation Center, Federal Highway Administration and ITS Pennsylvania. A number of companies and organizations involved in the transportation field also provided support. Mahoney praised the contributions of conference supporters and the efforts of the extensive network of volunteers who served as conference presenters and session chairs and who assisted with other conference activities. “This forum will continue to grow and evolve to address contemporary transportation issues,” he said. An outreach program of the College of Engineering and Conferences and Institutes | |||||||
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