Corrigendum

András Lakatos, Péter Mándoki "Evaluation of Traveling Parameters in Parallel Long-Distance Public Transport", 49(1), pp. 74–79, 2021. (in this issue)https://doi.org/10.3311/PPtr.14731When the above article was first published online Eq. (2) was incorrect. This has now been corrected in the online version

Corrigendum

László Lindenmaier, István Ferenc Lövétei, Gábor Lukács, Szilárd Aradi "Infrastructure Modeling and Optimization to Solve Real-time Railway Traffic Management Problems", 49(3), pp. 270–282, 2021. (in this issue)https://doi.org/10.3311/PPtr.18582When the above article was first published online some symbols in the text on pages 274–276, Table 7 on page 277, furthermore the subscript of the symbol bs in Eqs. (10), (11) and in the text on page 277 were incorrect. This has now been corrected in the online version. The correct version of some symbols in the text on pages 274–276, Table 7 on page 277, furthermore the subscript of the symbol bs in Eqs. (10), (11) and in the text on page 277 were published in this paper

Paving The Way: Recruiting Students into the Transportation Professions, MTI Report 08-03

The transportation industry faces a growing shortage of professional engineers and planners. One key strategy in solving this problem will be to encourage more civil engineering and urban planning students to specialize in transportation while completing their degrees, so that employers have a larger pool of likely recruits. However, very little is known about how these students choose a specialization. To help fill that gap, this report examines the factors that lead civil engineering undergraduates and urban planning masters students to specialize in transportation, as opposed to other sub-disciplines within the two fields. The primary data collection methods were web-based surveys of 1,852 civil engineering undergraduates and 869 planning masters students. The study results suggest steps the transportation community can take to increase the number of civil engineering and planning students who choose to specialize in transportation

Engaging Undergraduate Students in Transportation Studies through Simulating Transportation for Realistic Engineering Education and Training (STREET)

The practice of transportation engineering and planning has evolved substantially over the past several decades. A new paradigm for transportation engineering education is required to better engage students and deliver knowledge. Simulation tools have been used by transportation professionals to evaluate and analyze the potential impact of design or control strategy changes. Conveying complex transportation concepts can be effectively achieved by exploring them through simulation. Simulation is particularly valuable in transportation education because most transportation policies and strategies in the real world take years to implement with a prohibitively high cost. Transportation simulation allows learners to apply different control strategies in a risk-free environment and to expose themselves to transportation engineering methodologies that are currently in practice. Despite the advantages, simulation, however, has not been widely adopted in the education of transportation engineering. Using simulation in undergraduate transportation courses is sporadic and reported efforts have been focused on the upper-level technical elective courses. A suite of web-based simulation modules was developed and incorporated in the undergraduate transportation courses at University of Minnesota. The STREET (Simulating Transportation for Realistic Engineering Education and Training) research project was recently awarded by NSF (National Science Foundation) to develop web-based simulation modules to improve instruction in transportation engineering courses and evaluate their effectiveness. Our ultimate goal is to become the epicenter for developing simulation-based teaching materials, an active textbook, which offers an interactive learning environment to undergraduate students. With the hand-on nature of simulation, we hope to improve student understanding of critical concepts in transportation engineering and student motivation toward transportation engineering, and improve student retention in the field. We also would like to disseminate the results and teaching materials to other colleges to integrate the simulation modules in their curricula.Transportation Education and Training, Transportation Simulation, Roadway Geometry Design