Get a ‘Big Lift’ for Your Business at IBTTA Annual Meeting September 15-17
You’ll come away with a “big lift” for your asset management program, and for your own sense of what’s possible for an innovative tolling agency, when you attend IBTTA’s 87th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, September 15-17, 2019 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The Big Lift is one part historic project, one part state of mind. It’s the name Halifax Harbour Bridges assigned to the redecking of the Macdonald Bridge between Halifax and nearby Dartmouth, a project that has been garnering international attention (and generating really cool video) since 2016. And it’s the can-do attitude you’ll experience when you attend the Technical Tour on Sunday, September 15, on the first official day of the conference.
The Big Lift “was only the second time in the world the suspended spans of a suspension bridge were replaced while keeping it open to traffic most of the time,” the program states. “The project included replacing the entire road deck, floor beams, trusses and vertical hangers. Additional features of the project included adding a dehumidification system to the main cable to prevent future corrosion. The result is that the 64-year-old bridge is now safe for at least another generation.”
The opportunity to walk the bridge and learn about the project means you’ll get the full value of attending the Annual Meeting before sessions even begin. (Though you’ll want to sign up fast—space on the tour is limited.) But there’s so much more in store once the conference gets under way.
Taking Care of Our Assets
The Big Lift theme carries over into the first day of the conference with a morning general session on bridge asset management programs, chaired by Halifax Harbour Bridges CEO and former IBTTA President Steve Snider. The panel focuses on the need for risk-based asset management strategies for cable-supported long-span bridges that “are expensive to build and can be even more expensive to maintain,” the program notes. With many bridge authorities still struggling to incorporate asset management in their operating procedures and routine business practices, the session will show how the world’s best bridge operators “collect data, build models, develop strategies, update maintenance practices and reshape capital investment based on asset management plans.”
A day that begins with a local accent will end with a global focus, with the return of the Annual Conference’s popular Worldwide Showcase. With a spirit of innovation driving rapid change across the global tolling industry, this conference is always your very best opportunity to pick up new ideas from around the world that you can bring home and apply to your own operations. The lightning round format of the Worldwide Showcase allows attendees to soak up as much information from as many countries as possible in a short period of time.
And no IBTTA Annual Meeting is complete without the presentation of the Toll Excellence Awards. Carrying on the innovation theme that infuses the conference program, this year’s biggest achievements include a groundbreaking wildlife conservation plan, a pro-active traffic management system using real-time GIS, and an innovative approach to financing public-private partnerships (P3s). You’ll want to be on hand when one of the six award winners receive IBTTA’s highest honor, the President’s Award for Excellence.
Business, Technology, and the World Around Us
Much of your time at the Annual Meeting will be taken up in three discussion tracks, dealing with the business of mobility, technology and the customer, and the world around us.
The business track includes sessions on mobility as a service, the growing linkages between tolling and transit, and the disruptive trends that are reshaping urban mobility. Discussions on technology and the customer focus on clear communications and the rise of autonomous vehicles, with automakers, transportation network companies and software developers all getting in on the act. The world around us track is about the bigger-picture issues that continue to reshape the mobility agenda, including finance and payment systems, operational issues like severe weather, and public policy.
And above all, the networking sessions at IBTTA’s Annual Meeting are always your opportunity to meet the industry’s best vendors and interact with friends and colleagues from around the world. If you’ve attended this conference in past years, you know it’s the one place you have to be September 15-17. And if this will be your first Annual Meeting, it’s time to find out what you’ve been missing!