President's Ponderings

It has been a busy spring and summer for CITE and we have so much great information to share with you in this edition of Transportation Talk. First, we celebrate the success of our first virtual CITE Annual Conference with highlights of the many sessions that were included. As always, the conference provided an opportunity to step away from our day-to-day work and be inspired by colleagues from across Canada and around the world. Here are a few things that I took away from this event:

• I’m impressed with the breadth and depth of transportation areas practiced by our members and friends. You people are doing cool things every day! • Consider a prioritization pyramid where accessibility and equity are at the top and cars are at the bottom (and countless hours thinking about how that will impact the project work I’m involved in right now). • Ideas from keynote speaker Zahra Ebrahim to help make us, as transportation practitioners, support more equitable cities in our daily work: Ű “Experts on tap, not on top” when it comes to neighbourhood engagement. Ű Making change through “fierce incrementalism”. Thank you to everyone who participated in the conference from the arrangements committee to the many presenters and moderators to our sponsors and those who helped review all the abstracts and, finally, to everyone who attended and participated so fully in the online discussions. The broad participation of our transportation community is what makes our conference and our organization so valuable to be part of.

Later in this edition, you’ll find an article by Marnie Peters highlighting some of the information she shared in our conference opening plenary with Andy Fillmore and Jeannette Montufar (now available on YouTube) plus articles by the 2021 CITE Stan Teply and Student Paper award winners. Our CITE Excellence in Transportation Awards ceremony went virtual this year with a celebration (also on YouTube) featuring many of the individuals involved in supporting and developing the awards program as well as our winners. Congratulations to all our award recipients in 2021! There is much inspiration in these articles and videos for those of you who were unable to attend the conference or want to re-live the highlights.

This newsletter also provides updates from our TAC appointees on their engagement with their Committees and Councils in spring 2021. Our Training Committee is also highlighted in this edition and we provide information on two upcoming training seminars: Intersections for Everyone coming in September and October of 2021 and Speed Management with dates to be confirmed. We’re excited to be bringing these virtual training offerings and thank the committee and the consultants preparing the training for their ongoing work.

Julia Salvini, P.Eng.

Canadian District President president@cite7.org