Transportation Engineer
Julia is a transportation engineer. After graduating with a bachelor's degree, she qualified as a professional engineer. She now works for the Department of Transportation.
Julia is responsible for making sure that the transportation system in the city works as efficiently as possible. This means that she needs to be aware of how people move around the city, and how the various types of transportation work, including buses, subways, trains and on the roads.
Julia is currently trying to work out how traffic flow will change in response to a planned highway expansion just outside the city. She examines data that has been gathered about the number of vehicles using the roads at different times of the day, and looks at population distributions, car parking availability, and the routes that are most heavily used. Once she has gathered all of the relevant information, Julia begins to work out how the traffic signals will need to be changed once the new highway expansion is open. She needs to calculate the timings of the signals so that traffic flows at the optimum speed and there are no hold ups at particular points along the way.
After lunch, Julia works on another ongoing project. There have been a number of serious accidents along a certain stretch of road, and she is trying to find a way to make it safer. She looks over the statistics on road accidents and finds that most of the accidents involved only a single vehicle. She discusses the problem with the police department, and they agree with her that the main problem is that people are driving too fast. Julia considers some different options for slowing traffic on this road, such as building speed bumps or changing the traffic signs in the area. She arranges to meet with her supervisor to discuss the options and go over the costs of each one.
At the end of the day, Julia attends a departmental meeting to discuss what everyone else on the team has been doing and the plans they have for a major program of road repairs.
