Rail & Public Transit Council

MEET THE CHAIR

Murthy Bondada, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE

Dr. Bondada has been living in the US for the last 46 years. He has over 40 years of full-time urban transportation engineering and planning consulting experience in the US in addition to teaching for eight years at Government College of Engineering (now Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University JNTU College of Engineering) at Anantapur in 1960s. He served as adjunct professor at Pennsylvania State, West Virginia, and Florida Metropolitan Universities in USA. His over 40-years of consulting experience in the United States encompass Transportation Planning, Traffic Engineering, Public Transportation, and Advanced Transit Technologies.

He was involved in developing comprehensive multi-modal long-range transportation plans for several cities in the US including Detroit, Miami, Tampa, and Jacksonville and updating them at 5-year intervals. He was involved in over 50 feasibility studies for Automated People Movers, Inter-city high speed and maglev systems, and major highway and transit improvements. He was involved in the three downtown people movers (Detroit, Miami, and Jacksonville) and several commuter rail and rapid rail systems that are presently operating in the US. He authored and/or co-authored over hundred project reports. He published about 50 technical papers. Since 2000, he has been involved in the research on urban transportation in developing countries including Indian Cities.

Dr. Bondada has been actively involved with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for the last 40 years. He served as chair for the national committees on 1) automated people movers (APM) during 1981-85; 2) urban transportation division during 1985-1989; 3) high speed ground transportation systems during 1989-1993; and 4) urban transport during 1993-1999. He organized several international conferences for the ASCE and was editor or co-editor for six conference proceedings.

He initiated ASCE’s international conference series on automated people movers by organizing and chairing the first conference in 1985. In 2015, ASCE is organizing 14th conference of the series. The papers, published in conference proceedings of this conference series on APMs initiated by Dr. Bondada, are major bibliography for the most valuable document, “Guidebook for Planning and Implementing Automated People Mover Systems at Airports” published in 2010 by the Transportation Research Board under Airport Cooperative Research Program, which was sponsored by the US Federal Aviation Administration. The ASCE awarded him the National Frank Master Transportation Engineering Award in for his innovative research, planning and design of automated people movers.

He also initiated the ASCE international conference series on Urban Public Transportation Systems by chairing and organizing the first conference in 2001 in Miami. In November 2013, he was Honorary Conference Chairman for the 3rd international conference on Urban Transportation Systems organized by the ASCE in Paris, France.
The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) awarded “Engineer of the Year” award in 1999. The Telugu Association of North America (TANA) gave “Engineer of the Year” award in 2000. He is on the Board of Directors of Association of Transportation Professionals of Indian Origin (ATPIO). He received Lifetime Achievement in Engineering award at the 2013 Engineers Week in Orlando, FL. He is a Life Fellow of the ASCE and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).

Dr. Bondada received his B.E. (Civil) in Government College of Engineering, Kakinada, affiliated to Andhra University (now JNTU College of Engineering Kakinada), Master in City Planning (MCP) from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, Master and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering with specialization in Transportation Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and West Virginia University in the USA.

During 1999-2003, the Governor of the State of Florida appointed him as a member to the 9-member Florida State Board of Professional Engineers, which is responsible for conducting examinations and issuing Professional Engineer (P.E. licenses to practice Engineering at the highest ethical and professional level in Florida. The Board is also responsible to discipline the licensed engineers in Florida, who are found not maintaining the ethical and professional level, out of the 40,000 engineers licensed to practice in the State of Florida.

During the last twelve years, Dr. Bondada has been spending 3 to 4 months every year in giving seminars, teaching urban transportation, and presenting papers at various transportation-related conferences in India. During 2007-2008, he was US Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in the Transportation Engineering Division of the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras working on the Fulbright research project “Cost-effective Implementable Solutions to Reduce Congestion on Multimodal Urban Streets in Developing Countries – Case Studies in Chennai, India”. As part of the Fulbright grant, he demonstrated techniques to reduce congestion on half-kilometer corridor in Chennai, which is now being implemented by the Corporation of Chennai. During September 12-14, 2008, he organized and chaired an international conference on “Best Practices to Relieve Congestion on Mixed-Traffic Urban Streets in Developing Countries” at IIT Madras and edited 450-page conference proceedings. The conference was sponsored by the World Bank and United States-India Education Foundation (USIEF).

In 2009-2010, for one semester, he was Visiting Professor in Traffic and Transportation Engineering at Gayatri Vidya Parishad (GVP) College of Engineering (autonomous) in Visakhapatnam, India, which is affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Kakinada (JNTUK). During this period, he developed a cost-effective and implementable solution to relieve congestion in a demonstration corridor (Jagadamba Junction to Poorna Market) in Visakhapatnam.

 

Meet the chair

Murthy Bondada, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE

Dr. Bondada has been living in the US for the last 46 years. He has over 40 years of full-time urban transportation engineering and planning consulting experience in the US in addition to teaching for eight years at Government College of Engineering (now Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University JNTU College of Engineering) at Anantapur in 1960s. He served as an adjunct professor at Pennsylvania State, West Virginia, and Florida Metropolitan Universities in the USA.  His over 40-years of consulting experience in the United States encompass Transportation Planning, Traffic Engineering, Public Transportation, and Advanced Transit Technologies.

He was involved in developing comprehensive multi-modal long-range transportation plans for several cities in the US including Detroit, Miami, Tampa, and Jacksonville and updating them at 5-year intervals. He was involved in over 50 feasibility studies for Automated People Movers, Inter-city high speed and maglev systems, and major highway and transit improvements. He was involved in the three downtown people movers (Detroit, Miami, and Jacksonville) and several commuter rail and rapid rail systems that are presently operating in the US. He authored and/or co-authored over 100 project reports. He published about 50 technical papers. Since 2000, he has been involved in the research on urban transportation in developing countries including Indian Cities.

Dr. Bondada has been actively involved with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for the last 40 years. He served as chair for the national committees on 1) automated people movers (APM) during 1981-85; 2) urban transportation division during 1985-1989; 3) high speed ground transportation systems during 1989-1993; and 4) urban transport during 1993-1999. He organized several international conferences for the ASCE and was editor or co-editor for six conference proceedings.

He initiated ASCE’s international conference series on automated people movers by organizing and chairing the first conference in 1985. In 2015, ASCE is organizing 14th conference of the series. The papers, published in conference proceedings of this conference series on APMs initiated by Dr. Bondada, are major bibliography for the most valuable document, “Guidebook for Planning and Implementing Automated People Mover Systems at Airports” published in 2010 by the Transportation Research Board under Airport Cooperative Research Program, which was sponsored by the US Federal Aviation Administration. The ASCE awarded him the National Frank Master Transportation Engineering Award in Transportation for his innovative research, planning and design of automated people movers.