ARTBA recognizes top transportation design professionals

WASHINGTON – The American Road and Transportation Builders Association Transportation Development Foundation (ARTBA-TDF) recently recognized America’s Top 100 Private Sector Transportation Design & Construction Professionals of the 20th Century at a banquet in Washington, D.C. Individuals featured in the Top 100 were selected from nominations received from a survey sent to state transportation secretaries, newspaper editors, construction industry journalists, ARTBA members, and national construction and transportation-related associations.

Honorees included the following 22 engineers: Michael Baker, Jr.; Louis Berger, Ph.D.; Henry M. Brinckerhoff; James A.

Caywood; Holly Cornell; Eugene C. Figg, Jr.; Farley Gannett; Shortridge Hardesty; Frederic R. Harris; Ernest E. Howard; Robert A. Hubbard; James L. Lammie; Harry W. Lockner, Sr.; Henry L. Michel; Frank P. Moolin; Jean Muller; Enoch Needles; William Barclay Parsons; W.

Denney Pate; Wilbur S. Smith; Karl Terzaghi; and Henri Vidal.

Building such a vast transportation infrastructure system didn’t just happen,” said ARTBA-TDF Chairman Dave Kraemer, president and CEO of Plain, Wis.-based Edward Kraemer & Sons, Inc. It was a Herculean task – the result of a successful partnership between federal, state, and local governments and the private sector to serve the public interest. Collectively, the transportation construction industry titans named to the ARTBA list have helped build a better America.” The association published a book spotlighting all 100 titans” – America’s Top 100 Private Sector Transportation Design & Construction Professionals of the 20th Century. It is available online in pdf format at www.artba.org/pdf/2004_Top_100_20th_ Century.pdf.

ARTBA also announced plans to mark the 50th anniversary of the creation of the U.S.

Interstate Highway System with a series of programs and events – national issue and policy forums, public awareness and education projects, media outreach, and research activities – that will spotlight how the highway network impacts American life.

As the Interstate System approaches 50, it’s facing a mid-life crisis that few outside our industry and the public agencies that manage it seem to understand,” said ARTBA Chairman Rich Wagman, chairman and CEO of G.A. & F.C. Wagman, Inc., York, Pa. Over the past four decades, the Interstates have handled traffic volumes and vehicle weights that have dramatically exceeded the usage projections of those who developed and designed the plan in the 1940s and ’50s.”