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Ask TransLink: Peggy Gibbs, roads engineer!

Ask TransLink: Peggy Gibbs, roads engineer!

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From April 15 to May 10, you can Ask TransLink! We’re spotlighting one TransLink staff member every week and inviting you to ask them questions about their work. Find out all about the series.

Peggy Gibbs, a roads engineer at TransLink
Peggy Gibbs, a roads engineer at TransLink

Please extend a warm welcome to Peggy Gibbs, who works as an engineer with TransLink’s Roads department—helping manage our bridges, the major road network, and more! (Here’s a Buzzer blog post about our roads and bridges, btw!)

Peggy has kindly agreed to take your questions this week, ending at Friday, April 19, 2013 at noon. To get us started, I’ve asked her to tell us a bit about her work. Here we go!

What kind of work do you do for TransLink?

I am a Project Manager at TransLink, and have been with TransLink’s Roads Department for about two-and-a-half years.

The Roads Department here at TransLink has 11 engineers, and we look after the interests of all road user. We have a responsibility to help TransLink achieve its 2040 goal of having most trips by transit, walking, and cycling.

We operate (or help to operate) a range of infrastructure, from the region’s Major Road Network (MRN), to the BC Parkway pedestrian/cyclist path running from Vancouver to Surrey, to the five TransLink-owned bridges. We also look after the interests of truck traffic.

What projects are you currently working on, and what projects have you done in the past?

We have lots of projects on the go. Some of the ones we are working on now include the Evergreen Line integration, working with the Evergreen Line project team to make sure that buses, pedestrians, bikes, and autos can easily and safely access the new Evergreen Line stations. We are working on a multi-year project to upgrade the BC Parkway bike/pedestrian path, which hasn’t had an upgrade in the 27 years since it opened.

We work with all the municipalities in the Metro Vancouver area to fund maintenance, operation, and upgrades to the Major Road Network and cycling facilities. We are part of the TransLink team that works with municipalities and developers throughout the Metro Vancouver area to improve and integrate bus exchanges as town centres and neighborhoods are redesigned and redeveloped.

Can you describe the work of a road engineer? i.e.: what’s your day-to-day work like?

Road engineers at TransLink deal with everything from maintaining bridge structures to making sure traffic (including buses, bikes, and pedestrians) can operate safely and efficiently on a region-wide network spanning Metro Vancouver’s 22 municipalities.

To do that, we have a range of programs such as regular bridge inspections, MRN pavement inspections, and funding programs for roads and bicycle infrastructure. We also work with TransLink planners and municipal planners to make sure that new and existing TransLink services and facilities, such as bus routes and bus exchanges, can operate safely and efficiently.

On a day-to-day basis, that means things like (for example) working with staff at municipalities, the Ministry of Transportation, and developers when they are making changes to roadways, traffic signals, parking regulations, or sidewalks; making sure that roadway designers give buses enough space to pull in and out of bus stops and to turn; and working with Coast Mountain Bus Company to make bus exchanges easier for visually impaired persons to use.

And now it’s your turn to ask the questions!

Please feel free to submit your questions in the comments below, and we’ll get Peggy to answer them for you until Friday, April 19, 2013 at noon!

TransLink

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