Orange County Branch Newsletter

July 2022

ASCE OC T&DI

SBCTA Update

By Charlotte Wu, PE, ENV SP, STP | T&DI - Secretary



ASCE OC T&DI invited Dr. Ray Wolfe, Executive Director of the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority (SBCTA), to speak to T&DI regarding upcoming projects. Some of the projects highlighted during the presentation include Redlands Passenger Rail Project, Brightline West, and ONTLoop. The Redlands Passenger Rail Project, known as ARROW, is currently under construction and train testing.

This virtual event allowed all participants to network over 10 minutes in multiple breakout rooms. While everyone got to participate in the breakout room discussion, only the event sponsors had the opportunity to speak to the guest speaker in the sponsors’ breakout room.

Thank you to our speaker Dr. Wolfe for joining us, and thank you to all the sponsors for sponsoring this event (ACT, Mark Thomas, Michael Baker International, and Transystems.) We had almost 60 participants and had a rigorous discussion during Q/A.

Senate Bill (SB) 743 was brought up during our Q/A discussion. SB 743 was implemented in 2020 with its goal to change the way Caltrans evaluates transportation projects and reduce the amount of time traveling, this means that moving forward, the project will assess vehicle miles traveled (VMT) instead of the level of service (LOS). SB 743 is also part of a broader set of state initiatives to achieve climate and environmental goals.

For more details on SB 743, please see the link: https://dot.ca.gov/programs/sustainability/sb-743.

Technical SB 743 Fact Sheet is also available for a quick read: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/transportation-planning/documents/sb-743/sb743-factsheet-technical-a11y.pdf.


About the Author:

Charlotte Wu is a Transportation Engineer with AECOM. Charlotte is passionate about designing transportation projects that improve the quality of life while maintaining a balanced and sustainable community. Outside of work, she enjoys outdoor activities such as running, snowboarding, and riding a motorcycle. Charlotte can be contacted at charlotte.wu@aecom.com.


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