Annual Banquet 2018

Fifty-two Illinois ITE members and guests were able to attend this year’s Annual Banquet on January 18th at the Berghoff in downtown Chicago. The banquet each year is a commemorative event for the section to honor student awards, section awards, and to install the new board.

We were honored to have the 2017 Midwest District International Director, John Davis, provide an update on the Midwestern District of ITE and to install the new Section Board. John P Mick II provided information on the new Midwestern ITE Endowment Fund, which will be used to support members, students, and faculty to retain talent in the transportation profession. Jeff Young encouraged members to become involved with the ITE Public Agency Council and stressed the importance of ITE’s role in professional development.

John Wirtz of Jacobs Engineering was awarded the Outgoing President Award for his contributions to the Illinois Section. The Outstanding Member Award went to Monica Shei of Jacobs Engineering for her contributions that helped win the first ever ITE International Communications Award for the Illinois Section. Amarpal Matharu of the Illinois Tollway, a former President of the Illinois Section, was honored with the Past Presidents’ Award for his contributions to the transportation engineering profession in Illinois. We also recognized Patrick Jordan for his contribution to ILITE as the new ITEms Editor.

Outgoing President's Award - John Wirtz

Outstanding Member Award - Monica Shei

Past President's Award - Amarpal Matharu

This year’s Graduate Scholarship was presented to Ramin Shabanpour of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Student Paper Award was presented to Michael Hyland of Northwestern University for “On-Demand Autonomous Vehicle-Enabled Mobility Service with No Shared Rides Operational Problem: Comparison of Real-Time Assignment Strategies”. Congratulations to Ramin and Michael for their outstanding work in 2017. 

Graduate Scholarship - Ramin Shabanpour

Student Paper - Michael Hyland

The 2018 Board is as follows:

President Ryan Jacox
Vice President Brian Roberts
Secretary Josh Harris
Treasurer Jenna Brose
Technical Director Kelly Dunne
Activities Director Thomas Szabo
Student Affairs Director Ashley Hochstatter
Public Affairs Director Monica Shei
Operations Director Katelyn Bleach
Immediate Past President John Wirtz

A special thanks to the Illinois ITE 2018 Sponsors!

Platinum: AECOM, Jacobs, Civiltech
Gold: HDR. CBBEL
Silver: STV Inc., Baxter & Woodma, Gewalt Hamilton Associate, Inc. Transystems, KLOA Inc., WSP
Bronze: Lochmueller Group, CBB, Stantec

Photos: Craig Jakobsen

Future City Competition 2018: Helping Senior Citizens

The Future City Competition Regional Finals took place in Chicago on Saturday, January 20th at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Student Center East building. The competition is the culmination of months spent by junior high school teams and their engineering mentors to create a city of the future. Students submit a working project plan, present their solutions via a virtual city design (using SimCity), write an essay describing the unique attributes of their city and their solution to the year’s challenge (Helping Senior Citizens); build a scale model, and give a presentation to judges. Regional winners represent their region at the National Finals in Washington, DC.

For the past four years, the Illinois Section of ITE has participated as a special award judge at the Future Cities Competition. This year, 20 different professional organizations sponsored and gave 25 special awards at the competition. Josh Harris, the current Section Secretary, and Tom Szabo, the current Section Director of Activities, represented the Illinois Section of ITE this year as special award judges. Josh and Tom were tasked with reviewing each team's city and awarding the Excellence in Transportation Safety and Operations Award. This award was given to the team that had the most innovative future city design that demonstrated a safe and efficient surface transportation system that considered growth and preservation of the environment.

This year, Josh and Tom determined that the winning city deserving of this award was Flextopia, presented by students from Independence Jr. High School from Palos Heights, Illinois.  Flextopia featured multiple forms of safe and efficient transportation systems, including a Hyperloop for long distance traffic, urban transport pods for regional traffic, and voice interactive self-driving vehicles for local traffic. Sidewalks and paths were available for bicyclists and pedestrians throughout the city. The presenters for this team discussed each transportation option with incredible detail.

The Illinois Section of ITE was happy to not only sponsor the Future City Competition in Chicago again this year, but to participate as judges. We look forward to participating in this event again next year!