December 13, 2016

The December meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Tuesday, December 13, 2016 starting at 12 noon at the Masonic Temple, 420 Corydon Avenue (at Confusion Corner).

The December speakers were Bob Kurylko, P.Eng. and Colleen Sklar.

Colleen is the Executive Director of the Partnership of the Manitoba Capital Region where she works collaboratively with local leaders from across Manitoba in organizing and developing innovative integrated regional responses in land use planning, infrastructure investment, economic development water management and protection that can better to serve our growing communities and meet the demands of the future. Colleen also leads the Lake Friendly Initiative – a community engagement strategy aimed at protecting and preserving Manitoba’s freshwater resources.

Bob is a Senior Transportation Engineer at Stantec and has over 30 years of experience as a Transportation Engineer in both public and private industry. Bob’s professional interests lie in operations and safety, transportation planning, functional design, active transportation, and transportation design’s impact on urban form.

Collen and Bob discussed the Development of the Regional Growth Strategy for Manitoba Capital Region.

The luncheon also included a short AGM to sum up the 2016 year, including the election of a new member to the ITE Manitoba Section Executive Committee for the 2017/2018 term.

November 24, 2016

The November meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Thursday, November 24, 2016 starting at 12 noon at the Masonic Temple, 420 Corydon Avenue (at Confusion Corner).

The November speakers were Mark Warkentin, P.Eng. and Kris Maranchuk, P.Eng.

Mark Warkentin is a Project Engineer with MMM Group Limited, a WSP Company. He has 7 years of Design-Build experience and has worked on three such projects. Two of these DB projects have been with the Province of Manitoba; the PTH59/101 Interchange and the CentrePort Canada Way. His role on the PTH59/101 project is Project Coordinator.

Kris Maranchuk is a Project Manager with the Capital Projects Branch at Manitoba Infrastructure. He has 7 years of Design-Build management experience encompassing both the CentrePort Canada Way Grade Separations and PTH 59/101 Interchange Projects. He also has 7 years of experience with management of traditional Design-Bid-Build projects.

Mark and Kris presented on Manitoba Infrastructure’s latest Design-Build project, PTH59/101 Interchange Project. The project will see an interchange designed and built at the crossing of PTH59 and PTH101 highways. It also includes an upgrade to the PTH59 and PR202 intersection. This is a $204 million dollar project that will see an opening in the fall of 2018.

October 13, 2016

The October meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Thursday, October 13, 2016 starting at 12 noon at the Masonic Temple, 420 Corydon Avenue (at Confusion Corner).

The October speaker was Keenan Patmore, M.Sc., P.Eng. Keenan is a Transportation Engineer with MORR Transportation Consulting. He has extensive experience in the accommodation of vulnerable road users, traffic analysis, road safety, and project management. Keenan has received the Professional-in-Training Award from the Association of Professional Engineers of Manitoba and the Canadian Institute of Engineers John Vardon Memorial Scholarship. He was part of the team that developed TAC’s Pedestrian Crossing Control Guide, and is currently working on TAC’s update to the Guide.

Keenan presented on the recently completed TAC project, National Guidelines for Work Zone Safety. The intent of the guide is to promote consistent work zone practices across Canada for different operating conditions and provide additional tools to help facilitate clear and consistent communication to road users in work zones. The guide addresses a number of areas identified as lacking consistent guidance in current Canadian practice:

• Standard definition of common work zone design elements and understanding of safety concepts associated with work zones.
• Transportation management planning including assessment of safety risks and selection of appropriate TTC plans and devices.
• Work zone road safety audits.
• Modifications to typical TTC plans.
• TTC plans for urban areas (specifically pedestrian and cycling facilities).

This presentation discussed the process undertaken to complete the guide and provided a high level overview of the contents.

May 12, 2016

The May speaker was Dr. Garreth Rempel, P.Eng. Garreth is a Founding Partner of MORR Transportation Consulting Ltd. and specializes in transportation engineering issues related to freight operations and policy, road safety, and traffic information systems. He is a member of the ITS Canada Connected and Automated Vehicle Committee, US Transportation Research Board Intermodal Freight Transportation Committee, and several Transportation Association of Canada committees including the Connected and Automated Vehicles Working Group, Road Safety Standing Committee, and Transportation Planning and Research Standing Committee. He has co-authored five national engineering guidelines and was the recipient of the Innovation Award from the World Road Association for his research on characterizing urban container goods movement.

Garreth presented on new methods for collecting travel time and reliability data. Travel time and reliability are critical components of transportation system performance and becoming increasingly important for quantifying congestion. Methods for collecting this data have often followed travel time and delay study procedures described in the ITE Manual of Transportation Engineering Studies, such as the floating- and average-car techniques, or used spot speed data as a surrogate measure. These methods are costly, time-consuming, have difficulty providing high levels of geographic and temporal resolution, and are unable to provide adequate real-time data. Data sources such as GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks offer significant improvements over traditional methods and are becoming feasible options for collecting travel time data. However, there remains uncertainty about these sources concerning their accuracy, reliability, methodologies and assumptions, and overall transparency, or lack thereof. This presentation provided an overview of these data sources and described detailed issues and challenges to consider when using them for transportation engineering applications.

April 21, 2016

The April 2016 meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Thursday, April 21 starting at 12 noon at the Round Table Steak House, located at 800 Pembina Highway.

The speaker was Rebecca Peterniak, M.Sc. CE, B.Sc. CE, EIT. Rebecca is a Transport Infrastructure Specialist at Fireseeds North Infrastructure who specializes in road safety, vulnerable road user accommodation, and inclusive transportation. She holds a M.Sc. in transportation engineering from the University of Manitoba. Rebecca has completed over 100 safety audits and in-service road safety reviews, and worked on multiple safety guidelines. She is the first and only individual to receive both the Charles Miller Road Safety Award and the Mavis Johnston Traffic Safety Award for best-of-conference papers in the evaluation and policy streams, respectively, from the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP). She is Past Chair of the Canadian Road Safety Youth Committee, Editor of CARSP’s Safety Network newsletter, and a member of the Transportation Association of Canada Road Safety Standing Committee.

Rebecca presented on Vision Zero, an approach to road safety characterized by aggressive casualty and injury reduction goals, coordinated and multidisciplinary action, increased priority and resources allocated toward road safety improvement, and a specific ethical policy framework. Vision Zero was launched by Sweden in 1997 and gradually spread to other countries and states. It is distinctly different from historic road safety approaches in that it recognizes that all road fatalities and injuries are preventable and has the long-term goal of eliminating road fatalities and injuries. Central to Vision Zero is the notion that humans are fallible and will make mistakes: fault for a road fatality or injury does not exclusively lie with road users, but with the entire transportation system (e.g., the road infrastructure, policy and regulatory framework, vehicle technology, post-crash care, etc.). Canada’s most recent national road safety strategy was published in January 2016 by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) and adopts the vision of Towards Zero: The Safest Roads in the World. The national strategy is intended to influence the direction of road safety strategies at the provincial, territorial, and municipal level, and may lead to the widespread adoption of Vision Zero in Canada.

The presentation covered:

• Vision Zero overview and key differences between traditional road safety approaches
• Case studies, including New York City’s highly publicized Vision Zero program
• Principles for effective adoption of Vision Zero
• Vision Zero adoption in Canada, based on a survey with 31 jurisdictions

March 23, 2016

The March 2016 meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Wednesday, March 23^rd starting at 12 noon at the Round Table Steak House and Pub located at 800 Pembina Highway.

The March speaker was Tanya Worms.  Tanya has a Master’s of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Manitoba. She is a senior transportation engineer with AECOM and has over 10 years of experience working in project management and has been involved in several road, rail, airport and bridge projects that required extensive coordination and planning. Many of these projects are well known in Winnipeg including the Kenaston underpass (at the CN Rivers Subdivsion), the Perimeter overpass (at the CN Sprague Subdivision), the Jubilee Overpass Rehabilitation, the Assistant Groundside Project Manager at the James Armstrong Richardson International Airport as part of the Airport Site Redevelopment Project and she is currently working on the Plessis underpass (at the CN Redditt Subdivision). Since 2010 she has worked on numerous City of Winnipeg Public Works projects including Logan Avenue reconstruction, McPhillips Street rehabilitation, St. James Street rehabilitation and Corydon Avenue Reconstruction projects and the proposed Selkirk Avenue reconstruction set for the 2016 construction season.

Tanya presented on the Plessis Underpass Project and the project constraints, safety considerations, and the importance of coordination between all parties involved in large-scale transportation projects.

February 18, 2016

The February 2016 meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Thursday, February 18^th starting at 12 noon at the Round Table Steak House and Pub located at 800 Pembina Highway.

The speaker this month was Judy Redmond.  Judy has a Master’s of Science degree in Accessibility and Inclusive Design from the School for the Built Environment at the University of Salford in the U.K. She works with the City of Winnipeg Planning Property and Development department as the Universal Design Coordinator, administering the Universal Design policy for the City of Winnipeg. Her role encompasses planning Civic environments, services and information for persons of varying ages and abilities.

Judy is involved in all aspects of accessibility and community inclusion through her personal experience as caregiver to a family member with a disability. She enjoys enriching her community knowledge by learning from other individuals and professionals as a volunteer with the CSA B641 and NRC/NBC 3.8 Technical Advisory Committees, the Province of Manitoba Accessibility Legislation Advisory Committee, the International Accessibility Consultant Certification Committee and SCE Lifeworks Board of Directors. Judy has travelled extensively and presented accessibility research at several national and international conferences and remains very active and involved in disability issues across the world.

Judy presented on the City’s new responsibilities under the Provincial Accessibility for Manitobans Act and pedestrian realm updates to the Winnipeg Accessibility Design Guidelines.

January 14, 2016

The January 2016 meeting of the ITE Manitoba Section was held on Thursday, January 14th,  2016 starting at 12 noon at the Round Table Steak House and Pub located at 800 Pembina Highway.

Our presenter was Bob Kurylko, P.Eng.  Bob is a Senior Transportation Engineer at Stantec and has over 30 years of experience as a Transportation Engineer in both Public and Private industry. After starting his career at UMA Engineering in the 1980s he moved on to work with the Provincial Government at Manitoba Highways Traffic Engineering Branch. After a brief stay at the Birtle office where he was the Assistant District Engineer he returned to Winnipeg and the Traffic Engineering Office. After six years as the Traffic Operations Engineer, Bob returned to private practice at Wardrop to lead the design development of the roads approaching the new Provencher Bridge. Bob returned to the public sector as Traffic Operations Engineer and Director of Traffic Engineering briefly before returning to private practice once again at Stantec.  Bob’s professional interests lie in operations and safety, transportation planning, functional design, active transportation, and transportation design’s impact on urban form.

Bob’s presentation was titled Using GIS to aid in the decision process for the development of a corridor for the extension of PTH 110 west of Brandon Manitoba.  The presentation highlighted some of the considerations in the evaluation of route alternatives and how GIS was used to document and aid the decision process.