The Birth of an Era
Throughout the history of time, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UC Berkeley has never engaged in the transportation section in the annual Mid-Pacific Conference. In August 2016, a group of students finally decided that it was time to change that. Thus, the Cal Transportation Team is born.
Steel Bridge. Concrete Canoe. Water Treatment. Geowall. Transportation. All of these are the subdivisions of the Mid-Pacific Conference competition. For the longest time, UC Berkeley hasn't participated in the Transportation portion of the competition. That is, until a small group of students decided to take on the challenge.
In early October, Henry Hammel and his colleague Sam Shien Jinn went about to gather other students with an interest in transportation planning and design. Slowly but surely, together they were able to round up a total of 6 additional ambitious young minds to partake in this opportunity.
The team had to think of an innovative yet practical way to solve a congestion crisis along the soon-to-be-infamous Business Lane. The Toys-R-Us located right next to the narrow street complained about the multiple cars that drive through the lot to exit on the other side of the traffic congestion. But with such a small space to work with and not a lot of funds to begin with, how are we supposed to make everyone happy?
Many days consisting of long nights and conversations with various professors and graduate students resulted in an optimal solution. We decided that increasing the number of lanes by expanding the road partially into the Toys R Us parking lot would be best. It is not only cost effective because we are not making any huge changes to the main road, but it is also efficient since it is able to reduce the congestion along Business Lane significantly.
However, we aren't quite finished yet. Now we have to write a report explaining each and every single one of their decisions and its cost analysis. Furthermore, they are required to draw up their newly designed road in AutoCAD with specific details on the changes they made. This process took about a week of all-nighters to complete in order to make the deadline given to us. But I personally believe it was all worth it when we were sitting at the awards ceremony for the 2017 Mid-Pacific Conference.
Tick...tock...tick...tock...the ominous clock glares at us as we await our final scores from the three judges. The first score came out. It was a total of 98 out of 100 points. So far so good. The second score came out. It was a little lower, but nothing to be concerned about. However, the third judge gave us a 70 out of 100 points. This was a hard for our team since we were pushed out of the top 3 teams by a meager 3 points due to this last judge
Overall, we ended up being 4th place. This isn't a bad placement considering that this was our first time participating and we didn't know what to expect at the competition. It was a great experience and we can't wait to do it all over again next year. This time, we'll be sure to be on top.