2012 Meeting Highlights

President Packard called the meeting to order at 12:00 pm and Vice-President Wolfgramm introduced the speaker, Chris Sayers from the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Transportation Services.

Mr. Sayers presented information on the final draft of the Oahu Bike Plan, including current projects such as the Lei of Parks concepts in Ala Moana and Waikiki, the Civic Campus bike path widening project, Waialae Avenue, Diamond Head Road, and Hamakua Drive.  He also summarized the different types of bicycle facilities (i.e., bike lanes, bike paths, sharrows, etc.), discussed bike boxes, innovative treatments, and bike-transit connections.

President Packard noted that there would be no meeting in December, but meetings would resume in January 2013.  The meeting adjourned at 12:52 pm.

President Mike Packard called the meeting to order at 12:00 pm on October 31, thanked everyone for attending and asked everyone to introduce themselves.  He then introduced the speaker, Tara Lucas the Safe Routes To School Coordinator from the HDOT Highways Division.

Ms. Lucas started by announcing the instructions for the Halloween costume contest, in which everyone present was to vote for their favorite costume by placing a piece of candy in a small brown paper bag associated with the person wearing the costume.  She then presented the goals of the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program, and the five “E”s – Engineering, Enforcement, Education, Encouragement, and Evaluation.  She concentrated much of the first part of her presentation on engineering as most of the people in the room were engineers or planners.  She noted that although SAFETEA-LU expired on September 30 of this year, the State still had about $5 million in SRTS funding that had not yet been spent.  She said that a third call for projects would be issued soon, and discussed some of the challenges of the program, including that the awardees must have experience in completing capital improvement projects of this type and must be able to pay project costs up front and wait to be reimbursed through the program.  She then took several questions from the audience.  Finally, she announced the winner of the costume contest to be Steven Yoshida who was dressed as Batman.

The meeting adjourned at 12:52 pm.

President Mike Packard called the meeting to order and introduced the speaker, Pat Phung from the Federal Highways Administration division office.

Mr. Phung presented his top ten tips to accelerate project delivery.  He noted the economic benefits of accelerating project delivery, the new performance-based federal planning requirements, and the public’s awareness of the environmental process.

His top ten tips were:

1. Official correspondence letters should only include HDOT or FHWA’s letterhead
2. Recognize the high-context style of Native Hawaiian organizations
3. Understand the difference between HRS 343 and NEPA
4. Develop and monitor project management plans or schedules
5. Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act Programmatic Agreement
6. Understand the integration of major environmental laws
7. Don’t be afraid of adverse effect determinations
8. Read the FHWA/HDOT Stewardship Agreement
9. Understand the difference between a process law vs. a product law
10. Attend training, workshops, and briefings

President Packard noted that the next meeting would be in Kapolei on October 31; the guest speaker would be Tara Lucas, from HDOT.

Mr. Bob Driggers of Sensys Networks was the guest speaker.  He introduced his company, and its “puck” in-road sensor.  He briefly discussed the evolution of traffic signal control since the 1950’s and touched on current bicycle detection technology.  He then discussed issues around reliability measures and arterial optimization, including performance measures, speed detection, and the way that the Sensys Network “puck” identifies individual vehicles.  In response to questions from the audience, he also discussed how the “puck” measures vehicle speed, a typical in-road deployment configuration, how the “pucks” are deployed, and how they communicate with one another and with a central server.

The guest speaker for the September 26 meeting is scheduled to be Pat Phung from FHWA.

A joint meeting was held with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).  New ITE President Mike Packard, in brief comments, thanked ASCE for co-hosting the meeting, and announced the new officers for ITE’s Hawaii Section for 2012-2013:

President: Michael Packard

Vice President: Juanita Wolfgramm

Secretary: Brian Gibson

Treasurer: Sara Toyama

Director: Hong Li

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) Director Dan Grabauskas was the guest speaker.  Mr. Grabauskas provided some information on his background and how he came to be HART Director, and showed a short video about the rail project.  He also updated the audience on the rail finances and construction progress before taking a couple of questions.

The June meeting was held on June 27, 2012 at the Municipal Building.  The guest speaker was Ms. Rae Gee – Parking Coordinator, City and County of Honolulu Department of Transportation Services.

Parking Smart Meters are at the Honolulu Civic Center. The Department of Transportation Services is doing a pilot project to test the integrity of the Parking Smart Meters at the Honolulu Civic Center (Civic Center Garage & HPD Alapai Garages and on surrounding streets) prior to deployment to the urban core and eventually the rest of the island.

These Smart Meters are sustainable, solar-charged, battery meters that are retrofitted into an existing single-spaced meter to provide wireless communication between a sensor and parking meter.  The Smart Meters will provide choice of payment for parking patrons via credit card (by phone call, swipe or mobile application) and/or cash and coins for customers.

At the end of the meeting, the results of the 2012-2013 Hawaii Section elections were announced.  The following are the officers for the coming year:

• President – Mike Packard
• Vice President – Juanita Wolfgramm
• Secretary – Brian Gibson
• Treasurer – Sara Toyama

The May meeting was held on May 30, 2012 at the Municipal Building.  The guest speaker was Ms. Shevaun Low – HDOT’s Freeway Service Patrol System Manager.

From changing a flat tire to jump-starting your battery – the Freeway

Service Patrol keeps our freeways clear –  preventing traffic from backing up and causing longer commute times… best of all, it’s FREE!!  That service is only part of the many fascinating facets of the Hawaii Department of Transportation’s (HDOT) Intelligent Transportation System program.

The March meeting was held on March 28, 2012 at the Municipal Building.  The guest speaker was Mr. Xin (Alyx) Yu – President, ITE Hawaii Student Chapter, UH-Manoa Doctoral Candidate, Traffic and Transportation Engineering.

A signalized intersection is a fundamental component of an urban transportation system and appropriate treatments for intersection related congestion and safety issues are increasingly growing in importance. The most direct and intuitive approach to alleviate the recurring congestion is to cope with the peak hour disparity between travel demand and supply at the bottleneck intersections by expanding intersection capacity. However, intersection treatments such as adding lanes, turning movement restrictions, and grade separation that were traditionally applied to improve intersection capacity may not realize the expected benefits of relieving congestion and reducing delay as the traffic conditions at the downstream intersections can be greatly deteriorated by increased upstream arrivals.

Mr. Xin Yu was selected to present his research paper entitled “Analysis of Downstream Queues on Upstream Capacity Expansion of Urban Signalized Intersections” at the upcoming 2012 ITE Western District Annual Meeting in Santa Barbara. Mr. Yu’s study was conducted to provide traffic engineers with a simple, practical, step-by-step analysis method to identify the occurrence and the type of queue spillback, to determine the effects of downstream queues on upstream capacity and to select the best capacity expansion treatment.

The February meeting was held on February 29, 2012 at SSFM International.  The guest speaker was Mr. Dean Nakagawa – Manager, Statewide Transportation Planning Office.

Dean Nakagawa presented on the 2011 Hawai‘i Statewide Transportation Plan (HSTP), the seventh and latest in a series that date back to 1961. The HSTP is a policy document that focuses on providing guidance to system level and master plans of the primary modes of transportation in Hawai‘i.

The theme of the 2011 HSTP is “Making Connections.” This refers not just to connections among transportation modes, but also to other jurisdictions in the global economy. The 2011 HSTP refers to making connections between transportation and other concerns important to Hawai‘i, including protection of the natural environment, making the land use transportation connection, supporting the economy, and improving quality of life. The rainbow, common in Hawai‘i, is used to symbolize

making connections as well as bridging across geography, time, and culture.

The January meeting was

held on January 25, 2012 at the Municipal Building.  The guest speaker was Mr. Rex Nepomuceno of Safety Systems Hawaii who gave an overview of his companies products and services.