Rural matters: Roads that work for people should work for the environment, too.
Professional Development
Program Overview
WTI takes pride in the state-of-the practice research we conduct in our laboratories and in the field. Our greatest satisfaction comes when one of our projects solves a specific problem on a roadway or makes a maintenance engineer’s job a little easier on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, our outreach efforts – putting our research findings into the hands of people who can use them – are just as important as the research itself.
Since its earliest beginnings, WTI has supported and encouraged researchers--from both WTI and other organizations--to share their findings through presentations, training workshops, and other forums. Building on 14 years of experience with a broad range of technology transfer activities, WTI continually explores new and refined methods of communication and collaboration, to ensure that we reach as many people as possible with the information they need the most
With our unique understanding of rural transportation challenges and solutions, WTI engages in outreach activities that make important contributions to national transportation policy and practice. Within this context, WTI focuses on efforts that are:
- Topical – identifying emerging issues of concern and raising awareness
- Timely – continually integrating our latest research into forums and workshops so that practitioners have the most up-to-date information
- Targeted – providing the research to busy professionals with time and resource constraints through regional events, webinars, onsite trainings, and other alternative forums.
Events
Upcoming events being hosted or sponsored by WTI include the following.
June 15-17, 2010; Yreka, California
The Western States Rural Transportation Technology Implementers Forum is an annual two-day meeting where professionals involved with implementing transportation technology solutions exchange detailed technical information about how solutions are engineered and implemented. It is a time for dynamic discussion of practical and technical issues associated with rural ITS, to promote transferability of solutions and knowledge across the ITS community. Presenters delve into how solutions were developed, focusing on applications that have been deployed in the field and are being used in live traffic situations. Technical presentations are planned for 1 to 2 hours each, ensuring that this level of detail may be presented and understood. In-depth equipment demonstrations and numerous opportunities for networking with peers are also part of the agenda.
Conference website: http://www.westernstatesforum.org/
July 11-13, 2010; Big Sky, Montana
Why Traffic Safety Culture? Traffic crashes represent the largest cause of fatal injury for nearly all age groups, especially in rural America. Rural states such as Montana have the misfortune of having the highest traffic fatality rates both in terms of exposure (VMT) and population risk (per capita). Driver behavior represents the single largest causal factor for these traffic crashes. Specifically, most crashes result from poor decision making rather than misperceiving information or not having the requisite skills to act correctly. This implies that most crash-related behavior factors – such as speeding, drunk driving, failure to yield, seat belt non-compliance – are the direct result of deliberate decisions by drivers that increase crash risk and injury severity. Consequently, unless we can focus our research efforts on understanding how culture influences driver attitudes and decision-making processes, we cannot expect to engineer a fundamental and enduring change in driver behavior in our transportation systems.
Initiated in 2009, the first National Summit for Rural Traffic Safety Culture met with overwhelming success. Building on this success, the Summit has become an annual event with the second Summit to be held July 11-13, 2010 in Big Sky, Montana.
Our objective for the Second Annual Summit? Similar to the first Summit, we will continue to strive for increased understanding amongst traffic safety researchers, practitioners, and policy makers about the role of traffic safety culture on (1) behavioral factors that increase rural (and national) traffic crash risk; and (2) attitudinal barriers to public and political acceptance of traffic safety interventions. However, the second Summit will take these goals a step further by helping the audience to see the connections between theory and practice. Attendees should come prepared to listen, learn, share and discuss not only their experiences, but those of others in both facilitated small-group discussions and larger question/answer sessions.
Conference website: http://www.ruraltscsummit.org/
August 1-4, 2010; Huntington, West Virginia
Wild & Wonderful West Virginia is the perfect backdrop for the 2010 National Rural Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Conference. Hosted in historic Huntington, a city known for river, rail and trail, attendees can enjoy riverboat dinners, train tours, outdoor adventures and more. As the college town in the movie We Are... Marshall, downtown Huntington offers shopping at Pullman Square, fine dining and concerts at Harris Riverfront Park. Dozens of technical sessions will complement full and half-day training opportunities. Add networking functions and an ever-expanding vendor exhibition and you’ll understand how this conference lives up to its theme - The Bridge to Success: Engineering the Future of Rural ITS.
Conference website: http://www.nritsconference.org/
Past Events
As each state makes its journey to improve snow and ice control operations, road and maintenance agencies identify emerging needs for new equipment, the improved deicing and anti‐icing materials, and refined snow removal methods, in order to meet increasing demands. While progress has been great over the years, stakeholders determined that this needs assessment process could be expedited by bringing together state DOT snow and ice control experts and the private sector providing equipment, materials and services to share information and network on snow and ice control related issues. They also wanted the forum to include research organizations, who could identify gaps in communication, knowledge and technology and develop strategies to bridge those gaps. To address all of these issues, snow and ice control experts from 35 state Dots convened on August 29‐30, 2007 in Columbus, Ohio for the First National Winter Maintenance Peer Exchange. In that Exchange, participants identified research needs topics, which were subsequently adopted by several national research groups for continued investigation. Progress on the work of these national research groups was is posted on this site and is updated regularily. Additionally, a second event was held in August 2009 and those documents are also being posted on this site.
The 2008 Road Dust Management Practices and Future Needs Conference was held November 13-14, 2008 in San Antonio, Texas. Conference presentations, agenda and much more are posted here as they become available.
Set against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains and Lone Mountain, the 2006 National Rural ITS (NRITS) Conference, held in Big Sky, MT, August 13-16, provided more than 250 rural transportation and emergency services professionals with three days of workshops, technical sessions, and unique networking opportunities. Conference presentations, agenda and much more information is available by clicking the link above.
Professional Committee Web Pages
Technology transfer is key to our mission of moving research in to practitioners hands. One technology transfer role that WTI research staff members perform is to serve on many professional committees. As part of that service WTI hosts professional committee web pages to accelerate the dissemination of research findings and to assist our local, state and federal partners.
Transportation Needs for National Parks and Public Lands
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