Caltrans hosted the MESA Training Academy on March 27, 2009 from 9:00 – 4:00 pm.

Chris Thomas provided an introduction to transportation engineering at their district office in Old Town, fielding questions from students as well as discussing topics such as, ‘what is transportation engineering’, ‘what skills are needed’, ‘how does a project get built’, ‘what needs to be considered when designing a project’, amongst other topics.

Dimitar Peev led a hands on design exercise that allowed students to design a six lane freeway using CADD. Students were provided and lunch and continued the training academy at the transportation management center site where Everett Townsend gave students a tour of the TMC and facilitated a hands on activity that demonstrated real time monitoring and traffic operations strategies, such as incident management, ramp metering and reversible/managed lanes.