Volume 39 | October 30, 2018
Welcome to WTI NewsWire!
Here's the quick update to what is going on at WTI this week.
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News
Steve Albert on far right at the NRITS Plenary session


WTI Presents Implementation Tools and Solutions at NRITS Conference

WTI Researchers traveled to Fort McDowell, Arizona last week for the National Rural Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference and Exhibit, held in conjunction with the 25 th Anniversary of ITS Arizona, which focused on the theme of “Creating ITS Implementation Solutions for All Communities.”

WTI helped launch NRITS more than 25 years ago, and staff members continue to play a leading role by sharing their expertise at the annual forum. WTI Director Steve Albert opened the conference at the plenary session, presenting a history of NRITS and a eulogy for longtime NRITS champion, Bill Legg of Washington DOT. Later in the conference, Steve led the “Roundtable on Rural ITS,” which offered an overview of the challenges and opportunities facing rural areas interested in developing and implementing new transportation technologies. At the workshop on “Utilizing ITS for Rural Road Safety,” Natalie Villwock-Witte presented the Rural ITS Toolkit , which was recently updated by WTI staff through the National Center for Rural Road Safety. David Kack was a speaker at the “Multimodal Transportation Technology” workshop, where he presented on the Wyoming Intercity Bus Study , which provides a model for finding and filling transit gaps in rural areas, and Douglas Galarus spoke at the “Rural ITS Weather Applications” workshop, where he presented on the Aviation Weather Information (AWI) system developed for the California Department of Transportation.



Bicycle/Pedestrian Planning Highlighted at Society of Women Engineers Conference
At the annual meeting of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) in Minneapolis in October, WTI Researcher Natalie Villwock-Witte and her research partners at Minnesota Department of Transportation and Bike Minnesota were invited to lead a presentation entitled “Bicycles and Pedestrians: Advocacy, Planning, and Research.” Known as the “The World’s Largest Conference for Women Engineers,” SWE is attended by more than 10,000 engineers, students, and industry leaders.
Sara Dunlap of MnDOT Dorian Grilley of BikeMN and Natalie Villwock-Witte
Sara Dunlap (MnDOT), Dorian Grilley (BikeMN), and Natalie Villwock-Witte
New Publications
A Strategic Approach to Transforming Traffic Safety Culture to Reduce Deaths and Injuries
The Transportation Research Board’s (TRB's) National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) has released the results of a national study on traffic safety culture, led by P.I. Nic Ward of the Center for Health and Safety Culture and Cambridge Systematics. “A Strategic Approach to Transforming Traffic Safety Culture to Reduce Deaths and Injuries” provides guidance to state transportation agencies on how to transform the traffic safety culture of road users and stakeholders, with the long-term goal of sustaining improvements in traffic safety for all road users. The report is available at http://nap.edu/25286

Citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. A Strategic Approach to Transforming Traffic Safety Culture to Reduce Deaths and Injuries . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25286.

The Role of Social Capital in Traffic Safety Citizenship
Kari Finley Ph.D., Jay Otto M.S., and Nic Ward Ph.D. with the Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) at Montana State University have published an article in the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies. The article titled “The Role of Social Capital in Traffic Safety Citizenship” focuses on two traffic safety citizenship behaviors: asking a passenger to wear a seat belt and asking a driver to stop texting on a cell phone while driving and explores the role of social capital to facilitate engagement in these behaviors with strangers. Results indicate that social capital may influence engagement in traffic safety citizenship behaviors. This project was conducted in cooperation with the US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration and the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), as part of a Traffic Safety Culture Pooled Fund. The article is available through Open Access and can be found at The Role of Social Capital in Traffic Safety Citizenship or at https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/the-role-of-social-capital-in-traffic-safety-citizenship .

Citation- Finley, K., Otto, J. & Ward, N.J. (2018). The Role of Social Capital in Traffic Safety Citizenship. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies 13:2, 29-41. doi:10.18848/2327-0071/CGP/v13i02/29-41 .


Events
Safety Center Announces October Webinar on Rural Roadway Departure Countermeasures


The National Center for Rural Road Safety (Safety Center) is hosting a free 1.5-hour online webinar, entitled “ Rural Roadway Departure Countermeasures – Part 2 .” This webinar will explore various roadway marking/signing treatments, with a focus on horizontal curves, and how high friction surface treatments can help keep vehicles on the road. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, November 13, 2018 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Mountain Time). For more information and to register, click here . (This is the second webinar of a 3-part series. An archived version of Part 1 is available on the Safety Center website .)

Low Volume Roads Conference Announces Call for Papers
Interested in participating in the International Conference on Low Volume Roads, hosted by WTI in Montana in 2019? The call for papers is open until November.

The Transportation Research Board is soliciting papers for the upcoming 12 th International Conference on Low Volume Roads (LVR). For the first time, this conference is offering two levels of submission covering any relevant topic related to low volume roads: 
  1. Research-Level and Practice-Ready Papers 
  2. Extended Abstracts/Synopses 
For more information about the two types of papers, as well as deadlines and formatting requirements, visit the  Call for Papers page. There is a broad range of suggested topics, including safety, design, sustainability, technology, and workforce development. For more information on the conference itself, view the announcement on the  WTI website or contact  Laura Fay .


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