This year’s ITS World Congress in Detroit honoured nine personalities with the Lifetime Achievement, Local Government and Industry Awards in the three regions (Europe, Americas, and Asia-Pacific).
For Europe, SWARCO received the prestigious Industry Award after the second Plenary Session on Tuesday 9 September. The award was presented to SWARCO’s CEO Cees de Wijs (in the picture with Scott Belcher, Hermann Meyer and Hajime Amano), for SWARCO “engagement in ITS and the increasing focus on providing services addressing customer needs in addition to hardware”.
Motivation: “SWARCO provides the complete range of road marking, signage, signalling, and traffic management products, services and solutions. The focus of SWARCO’s business is to keep traffic in motion and inform and guide the traveller with innovative products and services. SWARCO helps its customers to manage mobility and increase road safety with high quality and environmentally friendly solutions while providing a sustainable return to our stakeholders”.
The other two recipients of the Industry Award respectively for Americas and Asia-Pacific were Kurt Buecheler, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Streetline Inc. and Nakjoo Kim, Executive Director, Korea Expressway Corporation.
Earlier this week the other two Awards (Lifetime Achievement and Local Government) were presented.
Heinz Sodeikat, Principal of AHS Management Consulting, received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Europe. Hermann Meyer, ERTICO’s CEO, accepted the award on his behalf during the Opening Ceremony on Sunday 7 September.
Motivation: “Heinz Sodeikat is one of the great ITS pioneers. His outstanding achievements include building ERTICO (Chairman 1995-1998, President & Spokesman 1998-2001, Advisor to the Board 2001-2004), chairing the 4th ITS World Congress, Berlin in 1997, doubling the ERTICO membership during his 3 years of chairmanship, as well as, successfully building and chairing ITS Munich (2001-2008) and ITS Network Germany (2007-2011). During the nineties he served as ITS “ambassador” of Siemens and toured the world advocating ITS systems and services at all major international congresses and conferences and was invited to numerous national events around the globe to share is views and experiences. Lots of his leading thoughts are realised today. He experienced that global ITS activities lead to global friendships and mutual respect”.
The other recipients of the Lifetime Achievement award for the Americas was Lyle Saxton, Director, FHWA Office of Safety and Traffic Operations R&D; and for Asia-Pacific, Taro Ishi, Councillor and Senior Visiting Researcher, Waseda University.
The Local Government Award was presented after the first Plenary Session on Monday to Leon Daniels, Managing Director – Surface Transport, Transport for London, UK.
Motivation: “Transport for London has been elected for the Award for pioneering deployment of ITS in traffic management and public transport including services for socially excluded travellers. TfL also provides a model for other cities and communities with respect to its open data policy. Transport for London data are released for developers to use for providing services. Transport for London encourages software developers to use these data to present travel information in innovative ways. In addition, with the Oyster card first introduced in 2003, Transport for London was a pioneer in electronic ticketing used on public transport. Last but not least, TfL receives the award also because of its outstanding success with its transport plan for the 2012 Olympic Games”.
Acey Roberts, Intelligent Transportation Systems Engineer accepted the award on behalf of Melinda McGrath, Executive Director, Mississippi DoT, USA and Martin Matthews, Secretary for Transport and Chief Executive of the Ministry of Transport, New Zealand was awarded for the Asia-Pacific regions.
