Mark your calendars for the final installment of the 2015-2016 President Speaker Series, "Transportation, Imagining the Path to Success!" The panel discussion with industry experts follows the grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony of the CSUMB @ Salinas City Center, scheduled Wednesday, June 8th at 2:30 p.m. The panel discussion follows at 3:30 p.m. in the center, located at 1 Main Street in Salinas.

The panel will explore challenging transportation issues facing the Monterey Bay region. Various constituencies believe that “if you build it,” more people will come – resulting in us sacrificing the natural balance we have achieved in the area. Others believe that we don’t have a “natural balance” at all, and traffic problems are destroying our quality of life. The panel will touch on the Highway 1 corridor, road and bridge maintenance and unused rail lines, along with developing and executing a mixed regional approach of car, bike, bus and light rail use, improving pedestrian routes, and what's necessary to entice drivers to walk or bike.

Drusilla van Hengel, principal at Nelson/Nygaard, a firm specializing in transportation planning. She has more than 20 years of academic and practical transportation planning and operations experience. Her focus is on bicycle and pedestrian master planning and capital project development, project evaluation, healthy communities, and safe routes to schools and parks.

Dr. Karen Trapenberg Frick, assistant adjunct professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Prior, she was a transportation planner at the San Francisco Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission for nine years where she worked on a wide range of activities including the agency's award-winning Transportation for Livable Communities program, congestion pricing, transport funding, and legislative analysis.

Bryan Jones, principal at Alta Planning + Design. Jones has held leadership positions within the public works departments for the cities of Carlsbad, Fremont, and Fresno where he has inspired and developed significant campaigns and aligned them with a strategic implementation plans that delivered numerous pedestrian, bicyclist, and complete and livable street projects.

A question and answer session and a public reception will follow the panel discussion.

The community is invited to this free event. Reservations are requested. To make a reservation by phone, to request special accommodations, or for more information, please call CSUMB @ Salinas City Center at 831-772-7021 or email tslaton@csumb.edu.

The speaker series is in keeping with Cal State Monterey Bay’s role as a community resource, providing forums for provocative discussions that can impact thought and action on issues important to our community.

This year’s speaker series is made possible by a generous contribution from Bud and Rebecca Colligan.