Overview
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Traffic Incident Management Program held the October 2021 Talking TIM webinar on Wednesday, October 27. Featured in this webinar were:
- Tyler Weldon, State Maintenance Engineer and Patrick Chavez, Statewide TIM Program Coordinator, Colorado DOT, will spotlight autonomous truck mounted attenuator testing and implementation in Colorado.
- Dezbah Hatathli, Community Outreach Manager, Arizona DOT and Kevin Biesty, Deputy Director for Policy, Arizona DOT will introduce the State’s autonomous and driverless pilots for large truck.
- William Reynolds and David Roark, Operations Manager and Arterial Operations Manager, Florida DOT District 3, will discuss their rural-focused towing incentive programs in Florida’s Panhandle.
Paul Jodoin and Jim Austrich, FHWA Office of Operations, organize and moderate this webinar series hosted by the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE). To view previous topics in this webinar series, please visit the FHWA sponsored Talking TIM webinar site.
Speaker Biographies
Dezbah Hatathli (Arizona DOT): Dezbah Hatathli currently serves as a Community Outreach Manager in Government Relations. She leads the Department’s development and implementation of policies surrounding autonomous/connected vehicles and future transportation and mobility technologies. Dezbah earned her bachelor's degree in Anthropology modified with Native American Studies from Dartmouth College. Her past work experience includes working for the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and Waymo prior to joining ADOT. She is also a member of the Navajo Nation.
William Reynolds (Florida DOT): William has 35 years of experience in tele-communication (utilities)field and have worked most aspects of the telcom industry from technician level to design and management. For the past 14 years he has been with FDOT with 10 years of that in ITS design, construction and operations. William is also a long time volunteer fireman with both City and County volunteer services. William's current job duties include traffic management of local and interstate roadways. He has designed, staged, and directed many MOT applications for both emergency and non-emergency situations.
David Roark (Florida DOT): David's experience includes 15 years in public safety communications and incident response and 6 years in Traffic Incident Management in the RTMC / District Traffic Operations TSMO Program.
Kevin Biesty (Arizona DOT) :Kevin Biesty currently serves as deputy director for policy and leads the proactive and effective process through which ADOT communicates with and serves Congress, the legislature and the people of Arizona. He leads the Department’s development and implementation of policies surrounding autonomous/connected vehicles and future transportation and mobility technologies. Kevin currently serves on Arizona’s Self Driving Vehicle Oversight Committee and is on the Board of Directors for the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.
Tyler Weldon (Colorado DOT): Tyler Weldon is the State Maintenance Engineer at the Colorado Dept of Transportation. His 25 year career spans from construction management, highway design, hydraulic design and most recently in the Division of Maintenance and Operations. He has been working on autonomous traffic mobile attenuator deployment for the last four years and started the Autonomous Maintenance Technology (AMT) nation research group to support deployment of this technology.
Patrick Chavez (Colorado DOT): Mr. Patrick Chavez has been working for CDOT since October 2014. He reestablished his home back in Colorado after retiring from the US Army in 2013 where he began searching for a new and challenging career. He started as the I-70 Mountain Corridor Operations Manager responsible for traffic operations from Golden to Dotsero. During this time, he worked to align CDOT operations with local agencies as well as implementing measures to increase effective incident response and travel reliability through the corridor, particularly during weekend peak traffic periods and during winter storms. It was in this position that he came to appreciate the value of a strong TIM Program. Patrick accepted a new position at CDOT in December 2018 as the Statewide Traffic Incident Management Program Coordinator. In this position, he is working closely with Colorado State Patrol and local first responder agencies to implement effective TIM measures across the state. Patrick is continuing to work to find ways to better support local TIM programs and better develop TIM Teams throughout the state.
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