Traffic and Highway Engineering

The new edition of Garber and Hoel's best-selling TRAFFIC AND HIGHWAY ENGINEERING focuses on giving students insight into all facets of traffic and highway engineering. Students generally come to this course with little knowledge or understanding of the importance of transportation, much less of the extensive career opportunities within the field. Transportation is an extremely broad field, and courses must either cover all transportation modes or focus on specifics. While many topics can be covered with a survey approach, this often lacks sufficient depth and students leave the course without a full understanding of any of the fields. This text focuses exclusively on traffic and highway engineering beginning with a discussion of the pivotal role transportation plays in our society, including employment opportunities, historical impact, and the impact of transportation on our daily lives. This approach gives students a sense of what the field is about as well as an opportunity to consider some of its challenges. Later chapters focus on specific issues facing transportation engineers. The text uses pedagogical tools such as worked problems, diagrams and tables, reference material, and realistic examples to demonstrate how the material is applied.

Nicholas J. Garber is the Henry L. Kinnier Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Virginia, where he served as Chairman of the Department from 1996 to 2002. Before joining the University of Virginia, Dr. Garber was Professor of Civil Engineering in the faculty of engineering at the University of Sierra Leone, where he was also the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. At the State University of New York at Buffalo, he played an important role in the development of the graduate program in transportation engineering. For several years he was a design engineer for consulting engineering firms in London, and he also worked as an area engineer and assistant resident engineer in Sierra Leone.

Lester A. Hoel is the L.A. Lacy Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of Virginia. He held the Hamilton Professorship in Civil Engineering from 1974 to 1999. From 1974 to 1989, he was Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering. Before this, he served as Professor of Civil Engineering and Associate Director at the Transportation Research Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Hoel is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.