Blogs

December 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: Year In Review

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 5 days ago
I have no hesitation in stating that ITE has had a banner year! Our Districts and Sections have held more than 300 meetings and events over the past 12 months, our Councils and Committees have produced more than 50 webinars and two dozen technical publications, and leaders at all levels of the organization have worked hard to ensure a successful handoff so that the organization is on solid footing as we flip the calendar into 2025. We achieved our goal of maintaining excellence across so many key areas—professional development programs, networking opportunities, technical prowess, leadership development—it’s hard to believe that we could be successful across ...

December 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Closing the Chapter on Another Year

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 5 days ago
Greetings, everyone! As we approach the close of 2024, it feels only natural to pause and reflect on the journey we’ve shared this past year. First and foremost, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my family, friends, and esteemed colleagues for their support during my time as ITE’s President. It has been a true honor and privilege, and I am immensely grateful for each of you who helped make this year meaningful. This year marked an exciting new chapter for ITE, and at its heart was our resolve to prioritize safety. With our new Executive Director, Chief Technical Officer, and the implementation of a new Strategic Plan to guide us over the next 3 years, ...

November 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Happy November Everyone!

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 11-01-2024
This issue of ITE Journal emphasizes the importance of community engagement in transportation projects. While my formal education was strong, it didn’t focus on the skills necessary for effective community engagement. One of my professors at Purdue remarked that civil engineering—unlike most other engineering disciplines—directly involves people. Transportation engineering and planning perfectly embody this, as people are central to our work—whether they’re driving, riding, or walking. Thus, developing the ability to engage communities and people is crucial, especially for those working in or with public agencies. But how can you build these skills after leaving ...

November 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: Action Speaks Louder Than Words

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 11-01-2024
As we focus on community engagement in this issue of ITE Journal , I want to start out with the famous Mark Twain quote, “action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.” How many of you read that and didn’t realize the full quote includes “but not nearly as often?” I’ll admit that I am most familiar with just the front end of that quote and had to dig a little online to expand my understanding. The first part is straight forward—it means that action can accomplish more than words. The second part, which Twain added, points out that although action is more forceful, speech occurs far more often. So, what the heck does this historical English lesson ...

October 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: Resilience Readiness

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 10-01-2024
n my column this month, I want to step back and reassure myself—and hopefully you along the way—that it’s okay to be slightly overwhelmed by the vastness of transportation resilience. What exactly does it mean to be resilient? Webster defines resilient (or resilience) as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” In the context of transportation, resilience is typically viewed as the ability of a transportation system to move people or goods in the face of one or more unexpected obstacles, failures, or extreme events. We often hear about “the resilience of a network” after a major weather disaster, or in conjunction with concerns ...

October 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Happy October

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 10-01-2024
This issue of ITE Journal delves into the planning and responses necessary to ensure our transportation systems remain resilient in the face of disasters and other unforeseen challenges. When the conversation turns to resiliency—whether discussing the actions needed or analyzing case studies to develop disaster response plans—I often reflect on the Scouting motto, “Be Prepared.” This motto, embraced by individuals worldwide, underscores the importance of preparation as a cornerstone of resiliency. However, there is another facet of transportation system resiliency that I would like you to consider. This aspect is deeply personal and individual, rooted in the ...

September 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Happy September!

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 09-03-2024
As we turn our thoughts away from this year’s International Annual Meeting and Exhibit, I hope you are doing well. If you were not in attendance at the gathering in Philadelphia with the Mid-Colonial District, you missed an incredible event! The technical sessions were excellent, the plenary sessions broadened our conversations, and the social and networking events were outstanding. In fact, I thought the plenary sessions were some of the best that we have ever conducted, with topics of great relevance that sparked outstanding conversations, especially for those employed by local agencies or working at this level of government. I encourage you to continue the ...

September 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: It’s In Our Culture

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 09-03-2024
This issue of ITE Journal provides a recap from our incredibly successful Joint International and Mid-Colonial District Annual Meeting and Exhibit. If you weren’t able to attend, I hope you can get a sense of the highlights from the articles, pictures, and reports in this issue! If you were there, you undoubtedly walked away with a feeling of “wow, that was a lot to soak in” during the 3 plus days of activities! During my State of ITE speech in the opening plenary, I highlighted that ITE delivers so many things capably because it’s in our culture. Why so many of us have joined, renewed, engaged, and continue to hang around for decades—it all boils down to the ...

August 2024 ITE President's Message: Traffic Safety and Collective Responsibility

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 08-01-2024
Friends and Colleagues, Every day, millions of people take to the roads to go about their daily lives. Whether driving, cycling, or walking, we all share the same space and have a role to play in ensuring it is safe for everyone. Traffic safety is a collective responsibility that affects every member of our community. Crashes and traffic incidents can have devastating consequences, leading to injuries, loss of lives, and emotional trauma. To make our roads safer, we must work together. Dwelling in the past or pointing fingers at drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, engineers, planners, elected officials, or advocates only creates division and detracts from the ...

ITE Journal August 2024 Director's Message: You’re Part of the Solution!

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 08-01-2024
This edition of the ITE Journal features several terrific articles focused on Intersection Improvement and Design. One of the things I like most about our monthly publication is the depth and breadth of technical content that we continue to feature, and it’s because of you—our members—who continue to produce interesting and exciting articles! While I’m always up for a great conversation about signalization, roundabouts, or unconventional intersection designs, my column this month leans into a topic that shines much earlier in the process: the trip generation data that many of our practitioners utilize to help them in their planning and development efforts. ...

July 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: It’s Annual Meeting Time!

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 07-01-2024
It’s the summer, an ideal season for releasing some stress from work, spending quality time with those you enjoy being around, and oftentimes, seeing some place new or experiencing something exciting. You can do all that with a family vacation, but you can also do all that at an ITE Annual Meeting! I write that with a small amount of tongue-in-cheek, but if you step back and think about it, there’s a lot of truth to what I’m saying. Having attended industry conferences for much of my 37 years in the workforce, I can say with confidence that I’ve been able to pack all those requirements into a conference or convention visit with some regularity. And I do it by ...

July 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Make Your Mark

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 07-01-2024
I hope you are all doing well. It’s hard to believe we’re already 6 months into 2024! For me, this marks the halfway point of my term as ITE International President. The first 6 months have been incredibly rewarding. I’ve attended numerous district conferences and meetings, met many wonderful people, expanded my professional network, and reconnected with old friends. The technical presentations I’ve seen have been particularly beneficial, providing valuable insights that I’ve been able to bring back and share with my team in Des Moines. I would like to encourage you to consider serving as a committee member, committee chair, or officer at some level within ITE. ...

June 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: Student-Teacher

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 06-08-2024
ITE has a proud tradition of providing tools and resources to students that will help them learn more about our industry—and ultimately advance their future careers. This is evident in some of the many webinars and publications available for free to ITE student members that focus on topics essential to professional development, as well as the emphasis on career path planning across our more than 150 Student Chapters globally. The many competitions for students that ITE helps support are also in line with that goal—giving students an opportunity to learn while hopefully having some fun doing it. I’m really excited every time I get to watch a Traffic Bowl match, ...

June 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Embrace Your Potential: An Open Letter to ITE’s Younger Members

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 06-08-2024
Happy June everyone! As we welcome the onset of June, I’d like to take a moment to address our younger colleagues. However, all are invited to lend an ear! Dear Younger Members, In our shared pursuit as transportation professionals and enthusiasts, we are united by a common passion for shaping the future of safe mobility. Our field is dynamic, ever evolving, and filled with opportunities for innovation and impact. Within ITE, you have a unique platform to learn, connect, and contribute to the advancement of transportation engineering and planning. Today, I want to extend a heartfelt invitation to each of you, regardless of age, to become active and engaged ...

May 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: Innovation vs Tradition

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 05-08-2024
It’s a commonly held belief that tradition can stifle innovation. “We’ve always done it that way” is like fingernails on a chalkboard for those visionaries who are constantly looking for new approaches, different solutions, or innovative tools. For many years, our transportation industry could have easily been branded as “steeped in tradition” for our reliance upon historic data for planning, engineering guidebooks for design, and past experience or rules to help dictate many of our actions. In my February column this year, I talked about the early days of my career in the transportation field and meeting professionals who believed in “cookbook style” planning ...

May 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: Max Headroom

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 05-08-2024
In this issue of ITE Journal, we’re featuring articles about artificial intelligence (AI), data, and emergent technology in our transportation profession. When considering this month’s message, I had a thought: What if Max Headroom, the fictional character from the 1980s known for his role as a television personality in a dystopian cyberpunk future, was a transportation professional? Imagining him in this role adds an intriguing twist to his character. Let’s explore how Max might fit into various roles within transportation: Traffic Broadcasts: Picture Max Headroom as a quirky and charismatic traffic reporter. With his signature stuttering, glitchy speech ...

April 2024 ITE Journal Director's Message: Feed Your Brain

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 04-01-2024
Throughout this first quarter of 2024, we have been digesting the recently published update to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, commonly referred to by its acronym MUTCD. This is an important document that impacts nearly every single person in our transportation community in one way or another. Some directly, some indirectly. In this April edition of ITE Journal, we’ll feature articles related specifically to the MUTCD and elements of the newly updated 11th Edition. And throughout this year, ITE will be launching several initiatives related to the updated MUTCD including webinars, a new certificate course, an indexed print version, specialized ...

April 2024 ITE Journal President's Message: The Modern Traffic Engineer

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 04-01-2024
In my journey as a city traffic engineer since 1982, I’ve witnessed profound transformations in the role, driven by technological advancements, urban planning shifts, and a growing awareness of sustainable transportation. Today, technology integration is key, with traffic engineers using advanced tools like traffic signal control systems, intelligent transportation systems, and real-time traffic monitoring. This contrasts sharply with the manual methods and basic signal timing relied upon 40 years ago. Modern traffic engineering thrives on data-driven decision- making. Access to abundant data from sources like traffic sensors and GPS devices empowers professionals ...

March 2024 ITE Director's Message: Safety is a Journey

By Mr. Stephen Kuciemba posted 03-07-2024
For the past several decades, ITE has been at the forefront of our profession in terms of promoting strategies, standards, and Recommended Practices that have safety as a principal goal. And we have not hesitated in partnering with various other industry organizations and associations in support of improving roadway safety and pursuing zero fatalities. So, it was no surprise when volunteers and leaders across ITE started working on our Strategic Plan last year, that the topic of safety came up regularly. But this time the tone was different. The conversation wasn’t characterized by “let’s keep doing the great things we’re doing.” Instead, it was “how can we ...

March 2024 ITE President's Message: March Greetings!

By Mr. John Davis P.E., PTOE,TSOS,RSP1 posted 03-07-2024
In January, I participated in meetings and gatherings held in conjunction with the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, USA. Engaging with the International Board of Direction, ITE Technical Council leaders, the 2024 Leadership ITE class, fellow professionals, and students proved enlightening and fruitful, offering exceptional networking opportunities for all involved. During my travels in February, I had the pleasure of attending outstanding Student Leadership Summits hosted by students in the ITE Districts of Florida Puerto, Southern, and Western. Each Summit was informative and provided excellent avenues for learning about leadership ...