AITPM@IPENZ - Last day. Ingenuity now more than ever.

Last day of the conference and I am happy to report on the conference proceedings back from Brisbane. I fully enjoyed my stay in Wellington but... give me Brisbane any day.

The conference day kicked of with keynote speaker Steven Newman, CEO of EROAD. I was hoping that Steven will speak about the work he did on road charging but Steven preferred to speak about future transport systems or as he called it super intelligent transport systems.

The second keynote speaker for the day was Rob Merrifield. Rob has worked for more than 50 years on road construction and management but his passion was always studying the historic development of transportation. From the Diolkos and the other ancient Greek rutways to the 1834 Newcastle upon Tyne railway and other tramway systems in England it seems that archeology takes more and more interest in transport systems of the past.

One of the morning streams was dedicated to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia a joint Technical Society of Engineers Australia and IPENZ New Zealand, formed to further the interests of the railway industry at large and its individual participants. With their upcoming conference CORE 2014 in Adelaide they are directed towards providing leadership for the facilitation and coordination of professionalism in the railway industry and the encouragement of member contributions to the application of railway technology and good management practices.

Michael McKeon from KiwiRai and then Randall Prestige from Target Railway Progress presented current and proposed New Zealand railway projects that will enable more efficient movement of freight and passengers across the country.

Overall the IPENZ Transportation Group 2014 conference was a great opportunity to learn about transport projects from the other side of Tasman sea. There are also  some good opportunities and ideas to enhance the collaboration between IPENZ and AITPM that are worth exploring the following days. I also found some good ideas that we can maybe adopt for our AITPM 2015 conference in Brisbane.

The quest for transport ingenuity is ongoing and more relevant now than ever in the history of 100 years of Engineers of New Zealand.

AITPM@IPENZ Day 3 - Freight, logistics and ... dogs.

Day three of the IPENZ Transportation award and as always with the conferences, people start to feel a bit tired and thinking of all the work that they have left behind.

Luckily there were a few interesting presentations starting with Geoff Dangerfield, CEO of NZ Transport Agency. Geoff presented the work that NZTA is doing to provide for transport solutions for today and tomorrow. He presented the “one network” thinking behind all NZTA actions and focused specifically on freight, where he described the agency’s goal for more freight on fewer trucks.

 

 

Of course he presented the already famous TV road safety ad, part of the wider Safer Journeys strategy.

 

One of the conference streams this morning was dedicated to the Signals NZ user group. The group has recently extended their activities to cover Intelligent Transport Systems to enhance people and freight movement through traffic control and ITS. An interesting fact from the presenters was that in New Zealand enforcement of red light cameras in not yet legal.

The organising committee has set aside some time in the program for delegates to have the chance to go through the “Active Poster Display”. Authors stood beside their posters and gave everyone the opportunity to ask questions and clarify things.

 

Another distinct stream of the day was the presentations of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport a worldwide professional body with presence in more than 100 countries.

 

Finally the day closed with another fairly unique feature, the roundtable presentations. Seven different presentations were set up around tables and repeated three times with a duration of 25 minutes each. That gave the presenters the opportunity to have a true interaction with everyone witch worked quite well for most of them.

 

 

In the case of Jo Draper from NZ Transport Authority was a huge success, where she and her colleague Dean Ingoe from Auckland Transport presented the challenges behind stakeholder consultation on transport projects land acquisition and engaged us in a role playing game that helped everyone understand all the critical factors. As Jo said “when you visit people at their houses, beware, there is always a dog”

AITPM@IPENZ Day 2 - Is it all about perception?

Second day of the conference and it was time for papers, presentations and posters. But the start of the day had a bit of a surprise for all delegates. The fire alarm went off and everyone got out with no problems. The Fire Services arrived at the spot within a short time and it must have been something minor, cause a few minutes later we were allowed back in and the second day of the conference officially began.

 

 

Dr Soames Job from Global Road Safety Solutions delivered a very interesting presentation on the Safer Journeys Strategy. He put the emphasis on speed and stated that speed is “in the heart of safer systems”. He also commented on how we dramatically underestimate the role of speed in serious crashes. He said that all the research shows that when we lower speed limits, crashes go down. He ended his speech by saying: When it comes to speeding; Think publicly – act personally.

 

 

Malcom Douglass and Ron Fisher two of the older members of IPENZ transportation group presented the history of transport in NZ and the role of engineering inheritance. IPENZ celebrates 100 years of presence and the Transportation Group celebrates having more than a 1000 members.

3M one of the major sponsors of the conference had a short but very helpful contribution to the discussion at the conference. Michael Holderness revealed part of a wider research that shows that major improvements to signs can be made by simply cleaning them.

 

Shared spaces was a big part of the Active Travel session. Presenters from Auckland Transport and University of Auckland showed examples where shared space schemes were implemented in NZ.

 

A common theme on several presentations was the notion of perception. Presenters were talking about the perception of safety and about the perception of benefits or about the perceived cost for the user and how projects should include perception surveys. That made me wondering; are we focusing too much on perception?

 

The final presentation for the day came from Dave Ferguson. Dave leads the vision, learning and mapless driving team for Google’s self-driving car program. And while other companies are working on the same research topic that will make us all one day Knight Riders, it was impressive to see a blind person sitting on the driving seat of a self-driving Google Toyota Prius.

 

 

AITPM@IPENZ Day 1

A few days ago, I had the pleasure and the honour to win the AITPM New Zealand Study Tour Award. This award gives the opportunity to an AITPM member to have the conference registration costs, reasonable travel & accommodation expenses to attend the conference and accommodation costs for an additional two days in the conference city fully paid by AITPM.

Wellington is a lovely city, relaxed but yet vibrant, with a very friendly atmosphere.

It kind of made me homesick as it reminded me a bit of Kavala. Harbour town build amphiteatrically around the water.

Wellington though, has some amazing museums with astonishing Maori art and artifacts.

The highlight of the CBD tour was the cable car ride. Wellington's cable car is more than 110 years old.

Networking with my New Zealand (and a few Australian) colleagues was fun with activities like the geocaching/ treasure hunt at Zealandia and a bridge building competition that proved that traffic engineers and transport planners are not only good in planning and designing bridges but also at building them.

This first day was very promising. I hope the rest of the IPENZ Transportation Group conference is as interesting and as fun.