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What does it mean to build a sustainable transportation system?
Each year, Kari Watkins takes a small group of students to the Netherlands to explore that question by experiencing the Dutch example. We'll meet with local officials to understand the decisions that leaders — and the Dutch culture more broadly — have made in building a transportation network based on mass transit and bicycling. Together, we'll bike across the country, pedaling miles everyday to understand why the system works and how it's different from Atlanta and the United States. If you've never biked other than recreationally, this trip will open your eyes to a new way of doing things. And if you've used a bicycle as a mode of transportation, this class will show you a world of possibilities you may never have experienced.
This course is part of the grand challenges electives offered through the Global Engineering Leadership Minor.
CEE 4803 - Sustainable Transportation Abroad
Dr. Kari E. Watkins
3 Credit Hours
In this course, we will learn about the planning, design, and operations of transportation systems in countries abroad that are known for a sustainable multimodal approach to transportation. This course is a study abroad course tied to the Global Engineering Leadership Minor administered in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The course will focus on how culture drives technological innovation and the role of mentoring in professional development.
This trip will focus on the Netherlands, a country where substantial efforts have been made to encourage cycling and transit usage by residents of all ages and cycling levels of comfort. The Dutch consider cycling more sustainable because of the reduction in space required, low emissions and noise, and health impacts. Dutch infrastructure provides good examples of protected bicycle infrastructure, traffic calming, transit network design, and transit and bicycle integration.
Ride along on the 2018 trip:
Ride along on the 2017 trip:
Sustainable Transportation Abroad News
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Spring Break travelers reflect on disaster recovery, a different approach to transportation, and water quality challenges after week abroadFor several dozen School of Civil and Environmental Engineering students, Spring Break was a packed week of mind- and perspective-stretching experiences in South America, Europe and Asia. The students worked and explored alongside professors and graduate students as part of three classes affiliated with Tech’s global engineering leadership minor. |
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Students offer Dutch-inspired ideas to turn Ted Turner Drive into a resilient gateway to downtown AtlantaIn a few years, Ted Turner Drive in downtown Atlanta may well owe some of its reimagined design to a School of Civil and Environmental Engineering class trip to the Netherlands. |
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40 students, 3 continents, 9 days. Experience engineering classes' spring break abroad in the travelers' own words and picturesDozens of CEEatGT students spent their Spring Break traveling to three very different parts of the globe to experience sustainable transportation in the Netherlands, learn about disaster recovery and resilience in China, and understand urban water quality in Bolivia. Share their journey through the pictures and words they sent back from abroad. |
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Spring Break travel gives students chance to make impact, see their subject come aliveThe School of Civil and Environmental Engineering will send dozens of students to four continents during Spring Break, giving them a chance to make a difference in the communities they visit and experience the reality of the engineering they have been studying. |
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From London to Amsterdam: Summer study abroad takes students to experience what they’re learning aboutThere’s really nothing quite like being there. Two groups of students from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering learned that first hand this summer as they traveled to London and the Netherlands to explore in real life the concepts and ideas they studied in the classroom. |
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Class bikes through the Netherlands to study sustainable transportationA group of Georgia Tech students has just returned from two weeks studying bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands and contrasting the Dutch approach to American standards. The overwhelming consensus: it’s not just bicycles that define the Dutch transportation system. Rather, it's the integration of biking with all forms of public transit and infrastructure planning that makes the Netherlands’ famed bike culture a way of life. |