One of ITE’s core strengths has been—and always will be—sharing knowledge across the multitude of disciplines involved in transportation policy, planning, engineering, and operations. So many professionals join ITE and remain members purely for the exchange of technical information, policy examples, best practices, and even not-so-great outcomes that others might want to learn how to avoid! Sharing knowledge has been a key pillar across the last several ITE Strategic Plans, and as we work to develop our newest plan, it remains an active priority.
Every year, ITE councils and committees produce dozens of technical documents and webinars, our Districts and Sections hold hundreds of meetings and luncheons, ITE Journal is read by thousands of professionals, and important technical products like our Trip Generation and Parking Generation tools are regularly updated with new knowledge and data.
We share information in other ways as well—through social media like our very popular LinkedIn posts (do you follow ITE on LinkedIn yet?), through email newsletters, through our Annual Meeting, and even through a podcast.
Yes, ITE has a podcast—the ITE Talks Transportation podcast, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary last month! We’ve produced more than 100 episodes during this past decade and covered just about every topic you can dream up. If you’ve never listened to one (most episodes are under 30 minutes), take the opportunity to visit ITE’s website or your favorite podcast app and catch a few episodes—it’s a small investment of time and well worth it!
Sharing knowledge is another reason ITE continues to invest time and energy into growing globally. Global excellence is the key theme of this month’s ITE Journal, and that drive to expand our awareness and intellect is a key strategic goal for ITE as an organization and ITE members around the world.
At the end of the day, sharing best practices and new ideas is a two-way street.
It requires someone to share AND someone to listen/learn. There are dozens of countries and cities internationally that have demonstrated excellence in areas such as pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, unique lessons from using safety cameras, and, of course, decades of experience with important safety designs such as roundabouts and multimodal transportation hubs.
ITE currently has members in 78 countries and 170+ Student Chapters across the globe. Today, our Global District has both student and professional members in Africa, Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, South America, Mexico, and many other countries in both Europe and Asia. A special shoutout to the current and past leaders of our Global District who have helped us expand engagement beyond just a few countries and bring new ideas and knowledge to the table for all to benefit from.
Yes, it’s true that a majority of ITE members currently reside in North America—but we would do well to become good listeners ourselves and welcome some of the knowledge sharing our global membership might be able to provide.
A famous 19th-century American journalist, Margaret Fuller, is credited with a saying that I really like: “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”