Eye on Opticom

Our guest on this episode is Kristin White, chief operating officer of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America). The former executive director of the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT) recently moved to Washington, DC and has ambitious plans for the nation's leading membership and advocacy group for the development and deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems. Here is a link to the McKinsey & Co. study referenced in the episode: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/human-capital-at-work-the-value-of-experience

Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) recently published an electronic guidebook to help agencies better understand the federal funding opportunities that are currently available. On this week's episode, we interviewed Mark Ignatowski, the author of that guidebook.

Richard Merrell is a recently retired fire captain and the former uniformed aide to the assistant fire chief in Fairfax County, VA. After moving from the state of Washington in the early 2000s, the 31-year veteran was responsible for blanketing the county with EVP as its population growth exploded. He is also married to Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, who was appointed by President Biden as the U.S. fire administrator on Oct. 25, 2021. 

In the wake of the Opticom Signal Core launch, Kurtis McBride, co-founder and CEO of Miovision, and Global Traffic Technologies President Nicole Rennalls discuss the future of mobility, the intersection of technology and public services, and a recent partnership announced between the two companies. 

Rob Gandee has been the fire chief for the Cleveland suburb of Willoughby Hills, OH since May, 2019. An Opticom™ Infrared (IR) customer since 2017, Willoughby Hills has the technology on all of its intersections and nearly all of its vehicles to cover its own city and the neighboring village of Waite Hill, an area consisting of 15 square miles and a population of just over 10,000 residents.

Chief Scott Collard has led the North Hays County Fire/Rescue; Hays County ESD #6 for the past eight  years.  The department consists of six stations located in and around the surrounding areas of Dripping Springs, Driftwood, and Henly, Texas.They originally deployed Opticom GPS on one intersection to get out of their fire station. Two and half years ago, North Hays built out its entire district with Opticom GPS. 

 Dr. Richard B. Gasaway is the founder of firefighting consultancy Situational Awareness Matters and one of the nation's leading authorities on human error, situational awareness and high-risk decision-making processes. He has more than three decades of experience in fire, EMS, rescue and emergency management as a firefighter, EMT-paramedic, lieutenant, captain, assistant chief and fire chief. He joins us to explain what situational awareness is, why it matters, and what he thought of his experience with Opticom. 

Transit analytics is expected to be a hot topic at this week's APTA's TRANSform Conference & EXPO 2021, where GTT will be a vendor from Nov. 7-10 in Orlando. GTT Vice President of Product Development  Ravi Shah makes his second appearance on the podcast to address the rise in importance of analytics in the transit space and reveal what GTT has in the works. And if you're going to be there, be sure to stop by booth #3482! 

Pat Foster is a technical project manager who joined the client services team at Global Traffic Technologies earlier this year.A former police officer with nearly two decades of experience, Pat retired as a lieutenant from the police department in Clay Township, Michigan. During his career, he held several positions, including overseeing the dispatch center, supervising the field training officers program, and serving as a special investigator to the medical examiners' office. He eventually left law enforcement to join a public safety software company as a project manager, a role in which he was responsible for deploying new 9-1-1 systems, Computer Aided Dispatch systems, record management systems and biometric systems. 

Josh Lehman, a product manager at GTT, and Dave Brown, a product manager at Miovision. GTT makers of Opticom priority control solutions, and Ontario, Canada-based traffic management company, Miovision, now offer a priority control solution with intersection cabinet monitoring. The solution leverages Miovision's open innovation platform to deliver proven applications like Opticom software-based, centralized priority control. This empowers traffic engineering departments to enable priority control and meet their Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPM) without having to add duplicative hardware devices or rip out existing infrastructure investments.

Robert E. Lewis is currently the interim director of public works with the City of Suffolk, Virginia. He has more than three decades of traffic engineering and public works experience and  has been the key stakeholder for the implementation and systemic development of Opticom™ Priority Control in Suffolk. A past president of the Virginia Section Institute of Transportation Engineers, he's a well-respected leader in traffic safety throughout the Tidewater area and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Chris Watkins, a field solution engineer with Whelen Engineering, joins the podcast to discuss a new partnership between the Connecticut-based lightbar manufacturer and Global Traffic Technologies, the makers of Opticom. As part of the new Whelen Cloud Platform for enhanced fleet management, first responders in vehicles equipped with the Whelen Cloud Platform will be able to deploy Opticom centralized preemption.

Global Traffic Technologies Senior VP of Sales Terry Griffith joins the podcast to discuss a recently-released white paper from the company that describes how Internet of Things-based transportation, transit and public safety technology solutions can transform cities by enhancing safety, delivering efficiencies and reducing harmful pollutants.In the paper, GTT proposes six calls to action designed to improve road infrastructure and transit systems while prioritizing safety, health and equity. Today's episode focuses on the white paper's second call to action, in which GTT echoes President Biden's goal of reducing traffic accidents and eliminating traffic deaths entirely by advancing “Vision Zero” in communities nationwide. 

Ravi Shah, the VP of product development at Global Traffic Technologies, joins the podcast to discuss  the first and sixth calls to action of the recently released GTT white paper about significantly increasing intersection connectivity by 2030, and connecting the cloud and intersections with all new vehicles by 2035. This is the second episode of a special six-part podcast series that explores each of those calls to action in greater detail.

Global Traffic Technologies President Nicole Rennalls joins the podcast to discuss a recently-released white paper from the company that describes how Internet of Things-based transportation, transit and public safety technology solutions can transform cities by enhancing safety, delivering efficiencies and reducing harmful pollutants. In the paper, GTT proposes six calls to action designed to improve road infrastructure and transit systems while prioritizing safety, health and equity. This is the first episode of a special six-part podcast series that explores each of these calls to action in greater detail.

Captain Pat McDermott is a 26-year veteran of the Metro West Fire Protection District in the St. Louis area. He spearheaded the district's transition from IR to radio-based preemption. 

Chris Tuff is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority (aka, CENTRO) in Syracuse, NY. He joined the podcast to talk about how CENTRO has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic and about how lessons learned from 2020 may impact the transit industry moving forward. 

Tommy Donley, a patrol officer with the Mason (OH) Police Department, shares stories about the impact of priority control he has seen first-hand in the field.

Mike Borrello has been a paramedic and volunteer firefighter for 25 years and is the host of the popular YouTube channel, Heroes Next Door.  He joined the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on the channel's mission, it's immense popularity and why preemption is so beneficial to the industry.

Eric Wood, chief innovation officer with the police department in Chula Vista (CA), was the department's police technology manager for nearly five years. In 2020, he helped launch a pilot program with the CVPD, GTT and Motorola to make the CVPD the first law enforcement agency in the country to deploy a new cloud-hosted, incident-based priority control solution from Opticom™. 

Chula Vista (CA) Police Captain Don Redmond is responsible for special projects at the department and led an initiative with the Chula Vista Police Department, Global Traffic Technologies and Motorola last year to launch a pilot program that would see the CVPD be the first law enforcement agency in the country to deploy a new cloud-hosted, incident-based priority control solution from Opticom™. 

Mike Haldane, vice president of marketing at Global Traffic Technologies, explains how preemption can benefit police and previews GTT’s upcoming launch of Opticom™ for Law Enforcement in early April.

Merrillville (IN) Fire Chief Ed Yerga comes on to share how he helped spearhead the effort to obtain federal grant funding and bring Opticom EVP to Northwest Indiana. 

The booming Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie has had preemption for law enforcement for the past few decades. In this episode, Grand Prairie (TX) PD Support Services Division Ryan Simpson details his police department’s long history with preemption and why it considers that technology as essential to its job performance as lights, sirens and badges. 

Mike Pate, commissioner of Harris County (TX) Emergency Services District No. 16, explains how a consortium of seven local agencies upgraded its legacy preemption technology to a more modern, connected solution following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. 

Mike Taylor, senior systems specialist with Houston-based Taylor Traffic Systems, discusses his role in implementing centralized preemption in Harris County, Texas.

Frank Blackley, the longtime assistant fire chief in Wilmington, NC who retired last year, explains how the Wilmington (N.C.) Fire Dept. got creative and worked with their city to finance Opticom™ Emergency Vehicle Preemption. 

Myrtle Beach (SC) Fire Chief Tom Gwyer explain why his city needed emergency vehicle preemption and why they chose a subscription-based model in Opticom™ Priority Control as a Service. 

Blake Redfield, traffic system manager for the city of St. Cloud (MN), discusses a five-year pilot program his city ran to test if Opticom™ relative preemption could help improve the efficiency of the city's snowplows.