California P.E. Board Approves Sunrise Process for Traffic Engineers

BY: Walter Okitsu, ITE District 6 Chairman on California Traffic Engineering Registration
Quoted from the JULY-AUGUST 2004 Edition of the ITE District 6 "WesternITE" Newsletter.

At their April 22nd meeting, the California Board for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors adopted a set of recommendations regarding the future of the nine title-protected nonpracticing disciplines, including traffic engineering. The key recommendation is that the nine title-protected disciplines should go through a legislative sunrise process at the same time to determine whether each specific discipline should be converted to a practice act, or eliminated. The overall intention is to discard the current two-tiered split of engineering disciplines between the nine titles and three practices (civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering.)

Opposition came from the Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California (CELSOC) and the Professional Engineers in California Government (PECG.), who presented a joint position against the recommendations. CELSOC and PECG argued that none of the titles should be upgraded into practices, and that traffic engineering should be converted into a practice authority within civil engineering. Under their plan, a traffic engineer could only obtain the traffic engineering title after obtaining the civil engineering license first, and then passing a traffic engineering exam. In my statement to the Board, I noted that many traffic engineers enter the profession by way of electrical engineering or other non-civil engineering fields. By forcing new traffic engineers to first become civil engineers, the result would be an unnecessary reduction in the number of traffic engineers. Furthermore, California would be out of step with Oregon, whose current traffic engineers obtained their PE license without having to first get a civil engineering license.

The Board discarded PECG and CELSOC’s position, and voted in favor of forwarding all nine of the titles to the legislature to undergo a sunrise process. That sunrise process is expected to begin later this year. Those titles that fail to be upgraded will be eliminated. Traffic engineering is widely perceived to be one of the titles most likely to upgrade. A legislative bill in 2005 would, hopefully, upgrade traffic engineering into a practice. The bill would also allow for overlap among all the disciplines, so that a traffic engineer may perform tasks currently reserved only for civil and electrical engineers.

The next challenge will be defining what parts of traffic engineering should require a license. At the very least, a registered traffic engineer would be allowed to perform the traffic-related tasks that currently require either a civil or electrical engineering license, such as design of traffic signals, lighting, guardrails, barriers, delineators, and speed humps. But the sunrise process will also decide whether tasks that currently require no license, such as traffic capacity analysis, striping plans, work site traffic control plans, speed zone surveys, and traffic signal timing, would require a P.E. to perform the task. I encourage District 6 to begin a discussion on this matter soon.

Walter Okitsu, ITE District 6 Chairman on California Traffic Engineering Registration
Quoted from the JULY-AUGUST 2004 Edition of the ITE District 6 "WesternITE" Newsletter.

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