Skip to content

My Take on Snow Lake - Nov. 10, 2017

Former Snow Lake resident works to untangle traffic
A screen capture of former Snow Lake resident Jonathan Foord presenting at the "2017 Waze Cities of
A screen capture of former Snow Lake resident Jonathan Foord presenting at the "2017 Waze Cities of Tomorrow, Global Event Summit" at the Google office in New York City.

Growing up in Snow Lake, Jonathan Foord’s main traffic worries might have included whether there would be a parking spot open in front of the arena for hockey practice or if the car in front of him was actually going to turn and go up Main Street the wrong way. Fast-forward to 2017 and the Joseph H. Kerr graduate is solving the traffic problems of a city with three-quarters of a million people, 250 rail crossings and 658 signalized intersections. He just returned to Winnipeg after presenting at an International Cities of Tomorrow summit in New York City, speaking on the inroads his department has made in addressing those difficulties.

Jonathan Foord is the eldest son of former residents James and Gwen Foord and he is Ben Foord’s grandson. After leaving Snow Lake to further his studies, he attained a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 2008 and master of science in transportation engineering in 2011, both from the University of Manitoba. While working on his masters, he attained a position with the City of Winnipeg and has been employed there since 2010 as a signals asset engineer.

As an educated and well-respected traffic analyst/engineer, Foord was very likely an easy choice as a presenter at the "Waze Cities of Tomorrow, Connected Citizens and Global Event Partners Summit 2017." The summit was held Oct. 17-18, 2017 at Google’s office building in downtown Manhattan, and was billed as a two-day summit to share best practices and smart city initiatives.

Waze (pronounced ways) itself is a GPS navigation software app that works on smartphones and tablets with GPS support and provides turn-by-turn navigation information and user-submitted travel times and route details, while downloading location-dependent information over a mobile telephone network. “It works by connecting drivers to one another, helping people create local driving communities that work together to improve the quality of everyone’s daily driving. This includes helping them avoid the frustration of sitting in traffic, cluing them in to a police trap or shaving five minutes off of their regular commute by showing them new routes they never even knew about,” states a webpage for the app.

Foord’s presentation to the summit came after lunch on the second day of the conference and in a YouTube video of the event, he appeared at ease and articulate during the 15-minute lecture he put forward on the strides Winnipeg has made in managing traffic. He spoke of the traffic management centre that the Manitoba capital has invested in. The centre manages all Winnipeg’s traffic signals and traffic video cameras and integrates the traveller information it gleans through the Waze app. Foord stated that the 92 state-of-the-art traffic cameras they have installed in strategic locations give them excellent coverage of close to half the roadways in the city. The cameras themselves can zoom up to three kilometres in monitoring roadways and feeds the video over LTE (4G mobile communication standard) to those monitoring and anyone using the Waze app.

His address was quite informative and you can’t help but be impressed at how inventive Foord and his cohorts have been in handling something as complicated and dynamic as traffic. For those inclined, Foord’s presentation can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aseUuQxg_vA. His address begins at the 5:33 mark and he also takes part in a roundtable shortly after his presentation.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks