Education

Have you ever wondered why building new roads does not automatically solve congestion? Does pricing in transport really help? Why may privatising public transport lead to disaster if not carefully thought through? Do slow and careless drivers in front of you cause traffic jams? Ever noticed that some infrastructure facilities are actually not designed for 150 kilometers per hour? Are the decisions for building the high-speed railway line and “Betuwe” route based on the right economical and transportation arguments? What are the impacts of automated driving?
If you are interested in these topics, then maybe a Masters Degree in Transport & Planning (T&P) should be your choice.

Below we briefly illustrate the role a T & P Engineer plays in practice. We also give you examples of what you will learn at the department of Transport & Planning.

Your role as a Transport & Planning Engineer


The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Especially in the western and central provinces, the demand for transport has grown rapidly in the past decades and is still growing, while the capacity of the available infrastructure and transport services are stretched to their limits. Moreover, the increasing costs of congestion, traffic un-safety and environmental pollution are central issues in politics and in the everyday life of many of the Dutch inhabitants.

Getting your masters at the Transport & Planning Department

The specialisation of T & P completes the basic knowledge of civil engineering with professional knowledge and skill of the transport engineer, the planner, the designer and the controller of infrastructural facilities and transport systems.

What you will learn

To give you an idea of what you can expect during your masters Transportation and Planning:

  • You will learn how infrastructure planning is intimately related to economic growth and decline.
  • Vice versa, you will learn how to model, analyze and translate spatial activity patterns to concrete traffic demands on infrastructure networks.
  • You will learn how to design road and rail infrastructure, both on a network level as well as on the level of a single segment (highways, intersections, terminals, public transport services). Key issues are safety, efficiency, and (societal) benefits and costs.
  • You will learn how to model choice behavior, that is, investigate the processes that influence users of infrastructure in their choice of destination.
  • You will get familiar with means to (dynamically) manage and operate traffic.
  • On a more operational scale, you will learn how traffic flow processes can be described mathematically.

Finally

More information about the fields of study within the Civil Engineering program and the Transportation, Infrastructure and Logistics program can be found on the program pages. Examples of research and graduation projects can be found on the pages of the research labs. More information can be obtained from Dr. Victor Knoop, education coordinator, and the study advisors.