KYSITE is making plans to hold the Southern District Institute of Transportation Engineers' (SDITE) Leadership Program and you are invited to apply.  Through strategic planning and goal setting, SDITE has been focusing on equipping and energizing our members to become leaders in the transportation profession. Specifically, we want to enhance the leadership skills of our members. This includes both the private and public sectors.

The training is extremely cost-effective, conducted by volunteers, seasoned in the transportation profession usually from within SDITE.  A total of some 300 people have now been through the training and the program has now been successfully conducted in six of the eight Sections of SDITE. As an example, the Alabama DOT has embraced the effort, having now sent 56 of their staff through the training.

The training session will be limited to 15 people, since the training is interactive and a small group works best. Additional sessions are expected to follow after this initial offering.  

Here is a link to a two-page description of the training program including an overview of the 14 program modules. We would welcome attendees from the KYTC and other public agencies throughout Kentucky.

The dates are still to be determined, but we are looking at the first date as early as September, with the second session approximately a month later.  The location wll be accessible to the majority of attendee likely to attend.

Please keep your eye open for an email from KYSITE very soon with dates and the application process.

I grew up in Los Angeles, the city by the freeway by the sea. And if there's one thing I've known ever since I could sit up in my car seat, it's that you should expect to run into traffic at any point of the day. Yes, commute hours are the worst, but I've run into dead-stop bumper-to-bumper cars on the 405 at 2 a.m.

 As a kid, I used to ask my parents why they couldn't just build more lanes on the freeway. Maybe transform them all into double-decker highways with cars zooming on the upper and lower levels. Except, as it turns out, that wouldn't work. Because if there's anything that traffic engineers have discovered in the last few decades it's that you can't build your way out of congestion. It's the roads themselves that cause traffic.

The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads) makes people want that thing even more. Though some traffic engineers made note of this phenomenon at least as early as the 1960s, it is only in recent years that social scientists have collected enough data to show how this happens pretty much every time we build new roads. These findings imply that the ways we traditionally go about trying to mitigate jams are essentially fruitless, and that we'd all be spending a lot less time in traffic if we could just be a little more rational. 

Click here for the full article.