Introduction
In the early 1970’s there was a sudden great demand for highway engineering specialists to cater for the surge in projects funded by loan agencies. The Directorate General of Highways (Bina Marga) faced a serious shortage of domestic experts for planning, design, construction, and supervision of highway projects. Bina Marga then initiated to develop a sustainable highway community comprising consultants, contractors, public work officials, and a support from academic teaching and research. To jump start the process, a postgraduate training course, the first post graduate course at ITB, was established at ITB in 1975 with full financial support from the national highway development program. This course runs for eleven years. Apart from expatriate professors, the support also provided staff training and laboratory equipment to boost the experimental and research activities on campus.
The 1978 revised curriculum of the then department of civil engineering incorporated many new additional courses in highway engineering. It became an option to major in transportation engineering at the department of civil engineering and the sub-department of transportation engineering was established to manage the specialized courses. This sub-department later on became the present Transportation Engineering Research Group.
The Transportation Engineering Research Group is at present one of the 9 research groups within the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB).
Daily activities of the research group comprise teaching, research, and community services as required by higher education regulations. Academic teaching and supervision is performed at S1, S2, and S3 levels; besides providing service courses outside the home Faculty, services are mainly provided for the Civil Engineering S1 program and several S2 programs within the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Research is conducted in the laboratory under administration of several divisions. Community services are provided on an institutional basis, or individually by the 14 members.