RSG is excited to welcome Michael Heaney to our staff as a Senior Consultant. Michael has spent the last decade founding and directing the Center for Park Management within the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). Michael’s work at the Center for Park Management focused on developing and providing implementation support for strategic business plans in national parks, as well as regional and national offices of the National Park Service. Prior to relocating to the USA, Michael did strategic business planning and product development for more than 10 years with Marks & Spencer, a major European retailer. Michael will be working out of his home office in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire.

RSG Senior Engineer and Market Street Gateway Project Manager, Dirk Grotenhuis, presented improvement ideas for the Market Street Gateway Project at a public input session in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Tuesday night. The input session, which drew over 50 residents and stakeholders, gave attendees the opportunity to review and comment on proposed improvements, including a “road diet,” new waterfront parks, landscaped medians, and new “pedestrian-scale” lighting. The project team hopes to have the public-engagement portion of the Market Street Gateway project complete by mid-January.

RSG Senior Consultant John Hinckley will be attending the Vermont Environmental Consortium’s (VEC) fall conference and trade show in Downtown Rutland, VT. The focus of this year’s event is Celebrating Entrepreneurship in Vermont’s Environmental & Energy Business Sectors. VEC expects their green energy conference, aimed at promoting job creation in the environmental sector, to draw more than 100 people from the environmental and renewable energy fields.

RSG Senior Consultant John Hinckley will be attending the Vermont Environmental Consortium’s (VEC) fall conference and trade show in Downtown Rutland, VT. The focus of this year’s event is Celebrating Entrepreneurship in Vermont’s Environmental & Energy Business Sectors. VEC expects their green energy conference, aimed at promoting job creation in the environmental sector, to draw more than 100 people from the environmental and renewable energy fields.

In light of the tragedy in the Philippines last week, RSG has donated $1,000 to the American Red Cross Typhoon Appeal. This donation continues RSG’s commitment to being a positive corporate citizen in the local and global communities, including supporting disaster relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, and the earthquake in Haiti in recent years. For more information about disaster relief efforts in the Philippines or how to donate to those affected by Typhoon Haiyan, please visit the American Red Cross website.

RSG recently completed an air quality permitting study for a new biomass heating plant at Norwich University, a project that will help the University save over $1 million in yearly heating costs. Norwich’s new biomass-fueled heating plant will produce an estimated 97% of the campus’ steam requirements and displace 657,000 gallons of fuel oil. The wood chips that will be used to power the new plant will be harvested within a 100 mile radius of the Norwich campus under Vermont’s Acceptable Management Practices program.

RSG Senior Consultant, John Gliebe, and RSG Director, Colin Smith, will give back to back presentations during the Regional/Urban Tour Modeling Session at the Innovations in Freight Modeling & Data SHRP 2 Symposium in Washington, D.C. on October 21.

An RSG project is featured as a case study in the recently published National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) Urban Street Design Guide. The project examined three design alternatives for the complex Pearl-Prospect-Colchester intersection in Burlington, VT. Working closely with the City and Metropolitan Planning Organization, RSG developed a set of pilot improvements that improve safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists, are quick to implement, and cost less than $20,000 to install. The design was implemented this summer and the pilot and study period will run until the end of October 2013. The Urban Street Design Guide is considered a new design manual for city streets today and demonstrates how streets of every size can be reimagined and reoriented as safe, sustainable public spaces for people walking, driving, biking, and taking transit.

RSG Senior Consultant, Vince Bernardin, will present “Planning for Sustainability: Evaluating Scenarios” at the 2013 Indiana MPO Conference in Terre Haute, Indiana. This presentation will look at a newly developed two-tier system that gives MPO’s the ability to easily develop multiple land use scenarios in collaboration with the public and the capability to show the public and decision makers the most probable land use which would develop given various policy scenarios.

RSG President, Tom Adler, will be attending the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. The IBTTA’s Annual Meeting covers a full range of issues facing the industry from planning and funding, to technology, to emergency planning, to the best mix of transportation modes for different community types and sizes. The focus of this year’s conference is Moving Smarter: How Tolling Meets the Challenge.