December 14th, 2021

ITE Manitoba hosted the 2021 Annual Business Meeting which included a review of the 2021 year, a financial report and 2022 budget presentation, and upcoming events for 2022.

At the beginning of the webinar, participants were split into breakout groups for approximately 10 minutes of networking.

Following the Annual Business Meeting, Shawn Doyle of Dillon Consulting presented. Shawn has over 30 years of experience in transportation and traffic engineering and planning. He has worked extensively for clients in central, western and eastern Canada and in the Caribbean and Middle East. Shawn has managed a broad spectrum of technical assignments, ranging from long-range transportation policy, to corridor and network planning projects, traffic and parking planning assignments and detailed traffic operations assessment studies. He enjoys helping communities to create practical, sustainable transportation systems that will benefit them for years to come.

Shawn’s presentation was on Multi-Modal Level of Service. Transportation performance measures for vehicles are well-established and understood, but methods for assessing performance for people walking, cycling, and taking transit are less well-developed. In this presentation Shawn introduced Dillon’s Multi-Modal Level of Service (MMLOS) framework, which is an integrated system for understanding how well a street or road serves all modes of travel, and how changes to the street or road may impact performance for each mode.

October 28th, 2021

ITE Manitoba hosted an October webinar featuring Susanne Dewey Povoledo & Morgan Glasgow of the City of Winnipeg who presented on Accessibility in Construction Zones, and Brian Patterson of Urban Systems & Chris Baker of the City of Winnipeg who presented on the Wolseley to Downtown Walk Bike Project. The webinar was hosted by Steven Florko of MORR Transportation Consulting Ltd., and ITE Manitoba President.

Presentation 1: Accessibility in Construction Zones

This two-part presentation provided the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of accessibility in construction zones. Susanne provided an overview of why accessibility in construction matters from a legal, policy and Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) perspective. She also reviewed the 7 principles of Universal Design and highlighted key attributes that must be maintained during everchanging site conditions to ensure continuous and safe access for all through or around construction sites.

With work underway to update the City of Winnipeg’s Manual of Temporary Traffic Control for the 4^th consecutive year, there have been continued changes to provide improved accommodation for vulnerable road users through work zones in the City. Morgan discussed the timeline of these changes, how we got to this point, and where we aim to be with the release of the 2022 Manual.

Speakers:

Susanne Dewey Povoledo, Universal Design Coordinator, City of Winnipeg

Susanne is the Universal Design Coordinator at the City of Winnipeg. In this role, she provides leadership on the City’s strategic accessibility and universal design initiatives and supports departments across the organization in implementing the City’s Universal Design Policy and ensuring compliance with the Accessibility for Manitobans Act Accessibility Plan and its standard regulations.

Susanne has a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and Master’s in City Planning, both from the Architecture Faculty at the University of Manitoba. Prior to assuming her current role in 2019, Susanne’s 18 years of employment with the City focused on long range and integrated land-use and transportation planning, policy review, and process improvement.

Morgan Glasgow, M.Sc., P.Eng., Traffic Network Engineer, City of Winnipeg

Morgan is the Traffic Network Engineer at the City of Winnipeg. In his role, Morgan oversees the temporary traffic control approvals, processes, and standards in the City. This work includes updating the Manual of Temporary Traffic Control, which governs work zones in the City. Morgan earned both his Civil Engineering degree and Masters in Transportation Engineering from the University of Manitoba. Prior to his current role, Morgan was with the Traffic Signals branch at the City.

Presentation 2: Wolseley to Downtown Walk Bike Project

The Wolseley to Downtown Walk Bike Project was identified as an important part of the network in the Pedestrian and Cycling Strategies and when completed, will provide important cycling connections in the area. This presentation discussed the design process, engagement process, and the construction of the first phase which will be completed this Fall.

Speakers:

Brian Patterson, RPP, MCIP – Senior Transportation Planner

Brian is a Principal and senior transportation planner with Urban Systems.  Brian specializes in active transportation, road safety, and multi-modal transportation planning and leads Urban Systems’ active transportation practice across Canada. 

Chris Baker, RPP, MCIP Senior Active Transportation Planner

Chris is the Active Transportation lead for the City of Winnipeg. He oversees the Pedestrian and Cycling Program and the implementation of the Pedestrian and Cycling Strategies. 

June 24th, 2021

On June 24^th, ITE Manitoba held a webinar featuring Richard Tebinka & Don McRitchie of WSP Canada Inc. who presented on the Winnipeg South Perimeter project, and Sushreeta Mishra, winner of this year’s Kean Lew Memorial Student Paper Competition. The webinar was hosted by Steven Florko of MORR Transportation Consulting Ltd., and ITE Manitoba President.

Speaker 1 and 2

Richard Tebinka is WSP’s Manager – Manitoba Transportation, and the office lead for the Lombard office. Richard has a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Lakehead University, and a Master of Applied Science from the University of Waterloo. Richard is a registered Professional Engineer in Manitoba, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, a Fellow of ITE, and spent 10 years on the Manitoba Section executive. He is a member of TAC’s Mobility Management Committee, and co-author of a just published TAC report on “Public Engagement in Sustainable Mobility Projects”, and a Past-President of ACEC Manitoba.

Richard was the Project Manager for the recently completed “South Perimeter Highway Design Study, and Functional Design for the Future St. Norbert Bypass” project for Manitoba Infrastructure, and the Senior Advisor on the current Owner’s Engineer assignment for the Design Build of an interchange and related roadworks at PTH 100 and PR 200 (St. Mary’s Road).

Don McRitchie is a Senior Project Manager with WSP Canada with over 40 years of experience in transportation engineering with federal, provincial and private sector agencies. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Manitoba. Most of his career has been with Manitoba Infrastructure (MI) where his initial focus was construction management. That transitioned into design engineering, where he was the Senior Detailed Design engineer for the Province with responsibility for design standards, design studies, and the review of all transportation designs.

Later in his career, Don was the inaugural head of the Capital Projects Branch which had responsibility for the largest capital works and the first alternative delivery projects undertaken in Manitoba. In that role, Don was the project manager for the South Perimeter Highway Design Study completed in 2020. He is currently the Deputy Project Manager for WSP’s Owner’s Engineer assignment from MI for the Design-Build project for an interchange at PTH 100 and PR 200 (St. Mary’s Road).

Richard and Don presented on the South Perimeter Project:

The South Perimeter forms the south link of the Perimeter Highway around the City of Winnipeg. It is approximately 42 km in length and travels through four municipalities. Tied to this project is the St. Norbert Bypass, with travels through a fifth municipality. The Province of Manitoba has committed to examining the South Perimeter to bring it up to freeway standards, with 22 grade separations, including interchanges, river crossings, and rail grade separations. Currently there is a mix of interchanges, at-grade intersections, and at-grade rail crossings.

There were a number of challenges along the corridor that needed to be addressed in development of the recommended plan, including coordinating with a separate Provincial review for short term safety improvements.

Alternative interchange types were examined, however, adjacent constraints often limited the types of interchanges that could be considered. Configurations considered at the various locations included cloverleafs, Parclos, trumpet, diamonds, diverging diamonds, and hybrids.

Addressing the concerns and desires of stakeholders, such as active transportation proponents, environmental proponents, protecting public parks, a Scouts Canada campsite, the Seine River (canoe travel, pedestrians, cyclists, and wildlife crossings), were among the many challenges.

Since completion of the study in 2020, the Province announced the construction of the first new interchange at PTH 100 and PR 200 (St. Mary’s Road) as a design-build project. This presentation will provide an overview of the project and discuss what is planned at the St. Mary’s Road location.

Speaker 3

Sushreeta Mishra is a senior year Ph.D. student in Transportation Engineering (Dept. of Civil Eng.) at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. It’s also her first year as a member and secretary of the ITE University of Manitoba Student Chapter.

Sushreeta’s work experience includes working as a part-time researcher at CUTRIC on an electric bus scheduling project. As a delegate selected from Manitoba for the Young Leaders Summit in Calgary (2019), she got a unique opportunity to learn, showcase ideas, and network with peers and industry experts in transit and sustainable transportation. Sushreeta’s primary research interest is in transit operations and planning, and her Ph.D. thesis focuses on optimizing the operation of semi-flexible transit for low-demand conditions.

Sushreeta presented on Stochastic Optimization of Semi-Flexible Transit Operations:

Semi-flexible transit (SFT) is commonly discussed as a cost-effective alternative to serving public transportation users in low demand conditions. Despite its considerable potential, implementation of SFT is limited due to two primary operating challenges: (a) fluctuating travel demand and (b) service unreliability. Most researchers recently are rigorously involved in developing complex algorithms and heuristics to handle operational planning issues while a very few focused on optimization of variables for SFT operation involving tactical decision making. Moreover, the optimization of decision variables are largely based on a single dimension of stochasticity, demand only. The present study proposes a methodology to optimize two decision variables, service headway and proportion of requests accepted for curb-to-curb service per trip while operating SFT following a route-deviation operating policy. Implementing stochasticity in both demand and vehicle arrival, we perform multi-objective optimization with two conflicting objectives as minimization of operator cost and user cost. Pertaining to vehicle delays and demand variability linked to values of decision variables in the Pareto set, we define the risks associated with selecting each value for attaining Pareto optimality. The risk is proportionate to occurrence of a decision variable value in the Pareto set. The presented methodology can be adopted as a decision support tool to establish planning policies to optimize SFT operation while considering interests of both operator and user.

April 9th, 2021

ITE Manitoba held a webinar on Transit planning in Winnipeg on April 9th, 2021. The webinar was hosted by Steven Florko of MORR Transportation Consulting Ltd., and ITE Manitoba President. The webinar featured four speakers from the City of Winnipeg and Stantec. Thank you to Kevin, Graeme, Bob, and Teresa for your excellent presentations and insights!

Speaker 1: Kevin Sturgeon, City of Winnipeg

Kevin Sturgeon is a transportation engineer and Senior Transit Planner for Winnipeg Transit. He has over 15 years of experience in multi-modal transportation planning, policy, design, and standards development in the public and private sectors. Kevin is a user of several modes of transportation and believes communities benefit from enabling individuals to choose the mode that suits them.

The Winnipeg Transit Master Plan is the first comprehensive master plan for public transit service and infrastructure in Winnipeg’s history. Winnipeg Transit worked with consultants Stantec and subconsultants HTFC, Argyle, and MORR on a two-year effort to ascertain Winnipegger’s mobility needs, based on data and public feedback, and create a network that helps people get where they need to go. With this plan, the transit route network will be redesigned to enable people of all abilities to travel anywhere, anytime, often with no need for a schedule. The new transit network is centred on three rapid transit lines running to each corner of the city. The heart of this rapid transit system will be Union Station, attracting new life to this landmark heritage building as the city’s flagship mobility hub.

Speaker 2: Graeme Masterton, Stantec

Graeme Masterton is the current Global Transit Planning Lead for Stantec located in the Victoria BC office. Graeme has over 33 years of experience in the transit industry, working at three transit agencies (Calgary, TransLink, BC Transit) and two Olympic Games (Vancouver, London). He currently works on transit, resort, and venue projects across North America with a focus on transit and multimodal integration. He was the co-creator of the Frequent Transit Network concept in Vancouver with Jarrett Walker.

Graeme presented on the structure of the Winnipeg transit network and how it will transform from a confusing mix of multi-purpose routes to a system of primary and feeder routes, with feeder routes tailored to getting people from their neighborhoods to a primary route and primary routes that move people longer distances.

Speaker 3: Bob Kurylko, Stantec

Bob Kurylko is a Senior Transportation Engineer located in the Stantec Winnipeg office. With over 40 years in the transportation field, in public service and private industry, Bob remains a significant contributor to many iconic projects around the City of Winnipeg. He continues to be involved in transportation planning for many major development projects in and around the City, across Manitoba, and into Ontario and Saskatchewan. With roots in Traffic Operations and Traffic Engineering, he remains a strong advocate for designing roads that reflect the context of the facility and embracing technology in the planning of transportation facilities so they meet the needs of all users.

Bob demonstrated how Stantec leveraged cell phone and ridership data as part of the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan, as well as how community needs were identified and incorporated in the design of local and primary routes.

Speaker 4: Teresa Platt, City of Winnipeg

Teresa Platt is a clinically trained health care provider with the City of Winnipeg. Teresa is currently the A/Manager of the Client Services Division at the Transit Department. Teresa has dedicated her professional career as a leader in the cross sections of health care, regulatory & transportation industries. Her work has been published in professional journals, presented at various conferences/symposiums and lecturers at the University of Manitoba for the Department of Occupational Therapy.  As an investigator for a professional regulatory body, she has expanded her knowledge of advanced investigation skills and procedural fairness.

Now more than ever, as highlighted over this past year, has the global connection between health care and transportation stood so evident. Gone are the days where public transportation is a simple task of moving people from one point to another. We are arriving and even catapulting ahead, to recognizing transportation as an integral link to a person’s quality of life, as recently noted by the World Health Organization (WHO). This presentation will review the key elements of a travel chain perspective and the paradigm shift in the public transportation continuum of services available for the citizens of Winnipeg.

March 9th, 2021

ITE Manitoba hosted its first ever virtual game night on March 9th, 2021. The event featured the popular online game Geoguessr, the geographic discovery game where players are required to guess their location in the world using a limited amount of spatial clues.

Participants were organized into breakout groups and each played through several rounds of Geoguessr, with some rounds featuring the World and other rounds featuring Canada. The competition was fun and fierce, with some participants able to guess a location to within 1 km at times! We were very happy to have a relaxing evening and catch up with our fellow ITE Members and Friends!