Award Recipients

Distinguished Contribution | Milton Pikarsky | C.V. Wootan
New Faculty Member | Non-Thesis Masters Degree

Biographies

Dr. Marty Wachs

Professor Martin Wachs has been among the nation's foremost transportation scholars and educators for the past three and one-half decades. Professor Wachs is currently the Roy W. Carlson Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. His training is in both a civil engineering and in urban and regional planning; he has a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the City University of New York and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Urban and Regional Planning and Civil Engineering from Northwestern. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty in 1996, Professor Wachs spent twenty-five years on the Urban Planning faculty at UCLA, where he served three terms as Department Head. Prior to UCLA, he was an Assistant Professor at both Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Most of Professor Wachs's four books and over one hundred journal articles and book chapters have has concerned the social and political aspects of transportation policy and planning. He has examined the history of transportation-land use relationships, the transportation needs of the elderly and the disabled, public transit fare and subsidy policies, crime on public transit systems, and the evaluation of transportation project alternatives. He is perhaps best known for his work on the ethical dilemmas in travel demand forecasting, where transportation analysts can be subject to intense pressure from public officials to produce favorable forecasts for popular projects. Most recently, his research has examined both transportation finance and the links between transportation, land use, and the environment. His exceptional research record has garnered Professor Wachs numerous awards, including the Pyke Johnson Award for the best TRB paper in planning and administration, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship.

Professor Wachs is a gifted teacher as well. At UCLA, he received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, an Award for Special Contributions to Minority Students at UCLA, the UCLA Alumni Association Distinguished Teaching Award, and the California Planning Association Planning Educator of the Year. And at Berkeley he has been awarded his department’s Best Professor Award three times, and Best Advisor Award twice.

Finally, Professor Wachs has been an important contributor to our profession. At Berkeley he is the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS). Prior to becoming the Director of ITS, Professor Wachs served as Executive Director of the University of California Transportation Center, where he became an active member of the CUTC. Professor Wachs recently served as the Chair of the Transportation Research Board, has Chaired TRB Special Reports on congestion pricing and the Congestion Management and Air Quality Improvement Program, and is currently a member of the TRB Executive Committee. Professor Wachs was recently inducted into the American Institute of Certified Planners College of Fellows for his extraordinary lifetime contributions to the planning profession. And, most recently, he was named a National Associate of the National Academies Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in recognition of his lifetime of service to the National Academies.

In scholarship, teaching, and service, Professor Martin Wachs has compiled extraordinary records of achievement. He is a credit to our profession and a worthy addition to the distinguished list of recipients of the CUTC Award for Distinguished Contribution to University Transportation Education and Research.