Eye on Opticom
A podcast from Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) that brings you insightful conversations with key decision-makers from the public safety, law enforcement and transit industries. Hosted by GTT's Bill Hupp.
Episode 22 – Pat Foster
Pat Foster is a technical project manager who joined the client services team at Global Traffic Technologies earlier this year.
A former police officer with nearly two decades of experience, Pat retired as a lieutenant from the police department in Clay Township, Michigan. During his career, he held several positions, including overseeing the dispatch center, supervising the field training officers program, and serving as a special investigator to the medical examiners’ office.
He eventually left law enforcement to join a public safety software company as a project manager, a role in which he was responsible for deploying new 9-1-1 systems, Computer Aided Dispatch systems, record management systems and biometric systems.
Episode play icon
Pat Foster is a technical project manager who joined the client services team at Global Traffic Technologies earlier this year. A former police officer with nearly two decades of experience, Pat retired as a lieutenant from the police department in Clay Township, Michigan. During his career, he held several positions, including overseeing the dispatch center, supervising the field training officers program, and serving as a special investigator to the medical examiners’ office. He eventually left law enforcement to join a[...]
October 12, 2021
Episode play icon
Josh Lehman, a product manager at GTT, and Dave Brown, a product manager at Miovision. GTT makers of Opticom priority control solutions, and Ontario, Canada-based traffic management company, Miovision, now offer a priority control solution with intersection cabinet monitoring. The solution leverages Miovision’s open innovation platform to deliver proven applications like Opticom software-based, centralized priority control. This empowers traffic engineering departments to enable priority control and meet their Automated Traffic Signal Performance Measures (ATSPM) without having to add duplicative hardware[...]
September 1, 2021
Episode play icon
Robert E. Lewis is currently the interim director of public works with the City of Suffolk, Virginia. He has more than three decades of traffic engineering and public works experience and has been the key stakeholder for the implementation and systemic development of Opticom™ Priority Control in Suffolk. A past president of the Virginia Section Institute of Transportation Engineers, he’s a well-respected leader in traffic safety throughout the Tidewater area and the Commonwealth of Virginia.[...]
August 26, 2021
Episode play icon
Chris Watkins, a field solution engineer with Whelen Engineering, joins the podcast to discuss a new partnership between the Connecticut-based lightbar manufacturer and Global Traffic Technologies, the makers of Opticom. As part of the new Whelen Cloud Platform for enhanced fleet management, first responders in vehicles equipped with the Whelen Cloud Platform will be able to deploy Opticom centralized preemption.[...]
August 16, 2021
Episode play icon
Global Traffic Technologies Senior VP of Sales Terry Griffith joins the podcast to discuss a recently-released white paper from the company that describes how Internet of Things-based transportation, transit and public safety technology solutions can transform cities by enhancing safety, delivering efficiencies and reducing harmful pollutants. In the paper, GTT proposes six calls to action designed to improve road infrastructure and transit systems while prioritizing safety, health and equity. Today’s episode focuses on the white paper's second call to action,[...]
August 11, 2021
Episode play icon
Ravi Shah, the VP of product development at Global Traffic Technologies, joins the podcast to discuss the first and sixth calls to action of the recently released GTT white paper about significantly increasing intersection connectivity by 2030, and connecting the cloud and intersections with all new vehicles by 2035. This is the second episode of a special six-part podcast series that explores each of those calls to action in greater detail.[...]
August 3, 2021
Episode play icon
Global Traffic Technologies President Nicole Rennalls joins the podcast to discuss a recently-released white paper from the company that describes how Internet of Things-based transportation, transit and public safety technology solutions can transform cities by enhancing safety, delivering efficiencies and reducing harmful pollutants. In the paper, GTT proposes six calls to action designed to improve road infrastructure and transit systems while prioritizing safety, health and equity. This is the first episode of a special six-part podcast series that explores each[...]
July 27, 2021
Episode play icon
Captain Pat McDermott is a 26-year veteran of the Metro West Fire Protection District in the St. Louis area. He spearheaded the district’s transition from IR to radio-based preemption. [...]
June 16, 2021
Episode play icon
Chris Tuff is the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority (aka, CENTRO) in Syracuse, NY. He joined the podcast to talk about how CENTRO has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic and about how lessons learned from 2020 may impact the transit industry moving forward. [...]
May 4, 2021
Episode play icon
Tommy Donley, a patrol officer with the Mason (OH) Police Department, shares stories about the impact of priority control he has seen first-hand in the field.[...]
April 27, 2021
Episode play icon
Mike Borrello has been a paramedic and volunteer firefighter for 25 years and is the host of the popular YouTube channel, Heroes Next Door. He joined the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on the channel's mission, it's immense popularity and why preemption is so beneficial to the industry.[...]
April 20, 2021
Episode play icon
Eric Wood, chief innovation officer with the police department in Chula Vista (CA), was the department's police technology manager for nearly five years. In 2020, he helped launch a pilot program with the CVPD, GTT and Motorola to make the CVPD the first law enforcement agency in the country to deploy a new cloud-hosted, incident-based priority control solution from Opticom™. [...]
April 13, 2021
Episode play icon
Chula Vista (CA) Police Captain Don Redmond is responsible for special projects at the department and led an initiative with the Chula Vista Police Department, Global Traffic Technologies and Motorola last year to launch a pilot program that would see the CVPD be the first law enforcement agency in the country to deploy a new cloud-hosted, incident-based priority control solution from Opticom™. [...]
April 6, 2021
Episode play icon
Mike Haldane, vice president of marketing at Global Traffic Technologies, explains how preemption can benefit police and previews GTT’s upcoming launch of Opticom™ for Law Enforcement in early April.[...]
March 30, 2021
Episode play icon
Show Low (AZ) Police Chief Joe Shelley joins the podcast to detail how three Arizona agencies worked together to implement Opticom™ Priority Control as a Service™. [...]
March 23, 2021
Episode play icon
Merrillville (IN) Fire Chief Ed Yerga comes on to share how he helped spearhead the effort to obtain federal grant funding and bring Opticom EVP to Northwest Indiana. [...]
March 16, 2021
Episode play icon
The booming Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie has had preemption for law enforcement for the past few decades. In this episode, Grand Prairie (TX) PD Support Services Division Ryan Simpson details his police department’s long history with preemption and why it considers that technology as essential to its job performance as lights, sirens and badges. [...]
March 9, 2021
Episode play icon
Mike Pate, commissioner of Harris County (TX) Emergency Services District No. 16, explains how a consortium of seven local agencies upgraded its legacy preemption technology to a more modern, connected solution following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. [...]
March 2, 2021
Episode play icon
Mike Taylor, senior systems specialist with Houston-based Taylor Traffic Systems, discusses his role in implementing centralized preemption in Harris County, Texas.[...]
February 23, 2021
Episode play icon
Frank Blackley, the longtime assistant fire chief in Wilmington, NC who retired last year, explains how the Wilmington (N.C.) Fire Dept. got creative and worked with their city to finance Opticom™ Emergency Vehicle Preemption. [...]
February 16, 2021
Episode play icon
Myrtle Beach (SC) Fire Chief Tom Gwyer explain why his city needed emergency vehicle preemption and why they chose a subscription-based model in Opticom™ Priority Control as a Service. [...]
February 9, 2021
Episode play icon
Blake Redfield, traffic system manager for the city of St. Cloud (MN), discusses a five-year pilot program his city ran to test if Opticom™ relative preemption could help improve the efficiency of the city's snowplows. [...]
February 2, 2021
Search Results placeholder