This year, I have been involved with two initiatives in our county. One is Kane County's Transit Plan which is just ending and the other is our Downtown Master Plan which is just beginning. Each planning process is professionally managed and both have or will go through all the traditional steps of gathering public input….
Category: Transportation
From the Floor at APWA Congress 2010
Due to budget cuts I was only able to attend the APWA Congress for one day since I was speaking on a panel at the show. Normally, I try to attend the entire event because I always come away with many valuable insights and opportunities to reconnect with fellow professionals. This year, in the short…
Transportation TV
AASHTO has always been an awesome organization. So it should come as no surprise they have embraced social media and are rolling out information about transportation through several channels. One of the cooler offerings has been a Transportation TV channel hosted on a dedicated website at http://www.transportationtv.org. Below is an example of one of the…
A Failure in the Making
Today I read a story about a massive hole in the road in a community in New York that has not been repaired for a month. Even though at first glance this might seem an excessive amount of time to neglect repairing a hole in the road, I can certainly understand the delay after reading…
Plot Your Potholes Here!
Ever since I found the FixMyStreet online reporting tool for England, I have been on the lookout for one to be developed for the U.S. And the other day, I finally found it at SeeClickFix. The site offers users the opportunity to plot their issues using Google Maps. Problems are designated by inputting an address,…
Plowing Au Gratin
Just when we were getting used to the idea of using beet juice for “salting” roads, someone has reached into the fridge and pulled out another food item as an alternative deicing chemical – CHEESE! Crews in Washington have determined that the salt water left over as a byproduct of the cheese production process can…
The Personal Rapid Transit Revolution
As the world searches for an answer to reducing the use of fossil fuels, cities are starting to look to the personal rapid transit (PRT) system as a potential solution. Lately, MISTER, a Polish-based company, has gained increasing notice for their innovative PRT system. MISTER is an acronym for Metropolitan Individual System of Transportation on…
Bumping into the DOT
As a civil engineer, the federal agencies I visit online are usually the DOT, EPA, and FHWA with an occasional click over to the USGS. Upon my entry into Second Life, I searched for these agencies within that virtual world and found nothing. The only federal agencies that had made it into the virtual realm…
Beautiful Bridges
Everyone in public works appreciates a beautiful bridge so I am passing on a link to the “16 Incredibly Colorful Bridges” post at the Color + Design Blog. This site is offering up inspiring photos/images of beautiful bridges from around the world and includes a color palette lifted from each image. Thanks to @bashley over…
Control the Snow – Part 3
Although this entry is not a direct synopsis from the recent APWA Snow Show that I attended, it is definitely related. My friend, Martin Brown, has a great blog about new technology being used in England for snow and ice control. You can check it out by visiting his fairsnape/isite blog.