Engineering
If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced dead prematurely.
- Scott Adams, in The Dilbert Principle
The broad-scale activities of the transport engineer may be contrasted with those of other engineering specialisations in the following terms:
(a) transport engineers do not build roads, bridges, airports, wharves, bus stations, railways and so on: that work is done by civil engineers;
(b) transport engineers do not build traffic signal controllers, electronic toll collection devices, navigational aids, electronic data systems at ports: that work is done by electrical, communications and computer systems engineers;
(c) transport engineers do not design cars, trucks, buses, planes, ships, locomotives and rolling stock: that work is done by mechanical engineers.
The work that is done by transport engineers is to use the outputs produced by these other engineers to achieve the efficient, effective and safe movement of people and goods.
- Mike Taylor, presenting Australian perspectives on ITS education: a personal view to the 5th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, 1998
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