UPDATE: Thursday, July 26th, 2012
The Western States Rural Transportation Consortium held its annual Steering Committee meeting on June 12, 2012, just prior to the kick-off of the 7th annual Western States Forum in Yreka, California. You can review the meeting agenda here or on the Consortium’s Documents page.
David Veneziano called the meeting to order with a welcome, introductions were made around the group, and the agenda was reviewed for any additions or corrections.
Leann Koon provided a preview of the upcoming Western States Forum with a description of the audience, an overview of the Schedule of Events, and the speaker agenda. Check out the Forum website for more information and to review the technical content from the 2012 Forum as well as earlier Forums. Rural ITS engineers and practitioners from six different states attended this year’s Forum – California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Texas.
This is a new year for the Pooled Fund – it started April 1st and will run through April 2013. The group discussed various administrative aspects of the Pooled Fund. Founding Consortium member Ted Bailey’s responsibilities at Washington State DOT are evolving towards asset management so WSDOT’s Ron Vessey will be transitioning into the leadership role for management of the Pooled Fund. Thank you to Ted for his efforts and persistence in creating and helping direct the work of the WSRTC and the Pooled Fund.
Ideas for new incubator projects and website enhancements were discussed. More information to come in subsequent updates.
David Veneziano covered the progress and status of Year 1 incubator projects, particularly the Survey of Safety Warning Devices. Ways and means to efficiently conduct the survey and gather as much relevant information as possible were discussed. The Regional ICM Planning incubator project is progressing, with the planning approach currently under development.
Doug Galarus described WTI project work that would be of interest to the group including Professional Capacity Building for Communications, WeatherShare, Integration of Aviation AWOS/ASOS with RWIS, Responder, and Augmented Speed Enforcement. The meeting concluded with the traditional roundtable discussion about Rural ITS and related projects each of the member states are working on. The group engaged in dialogue on several subjects, sharing contacts and relevant experiences on a variety of ITS technologies.
To review the meeting minutes, click here, or go to the Consortium’s Documents page. The presentation from the meeting is also on the Consortium’s Documents page.
Watch for an update about the Western States Forum on the Forum’s project page!
The next meeting of the WSRTC will in mid-September at the annual National Rural ITS Conference, to be held this year in Biloxi, Mississippi. A presentation about the Consortium is scheduled on Monday (9/17/2012) at 1:00 pm in Session A1: Multi-Agency Coordination: Leveraging Resources and Improving Services for the Traveling Public.