Alan M. Voorhees

Class of 1947
Innovator in Urban Planning and Traffic Forecasting
1922 -2005

Alan Voorhees began his career as a planning engineer for Colorado Springs and became one of the world's leading city planners and traffic forecasters.

For the city of Baltimore, he undertook the first application of mathematical models for forecasting traffic and published a landmark paper that has become the foundation for most traffic forecasting techniques in use today.

In 1961 he established his own consulting firm, which set up transportation and planning studies for major cities in the United States, Canada, and England. He was the planner of most of the metro systems built in the free world in the 1960s and 1970s, and creator of master plans for major cities and new communities around the world.

Voorhees received the first Harland Bartholomew Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers as the engineer who has contributed most to urban planning, and was honored with the establishment of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University.

He was a former Rensselaer trustee and principal supporter for Rensselaer's Voorhees Computing Center.