Short Biography
Dr. Hurdle died June 1. He was born on December 27, 1935, in Pocatello, Idaho, and grew up in the smaller nearby town of Blackfoot. In 1950, he moved with his parents to Shell Beach, California, and finished high school at Arroyo Grande Union High School. In high school and university his social life was centred around music. He played bassoon in high school and in the University of California (at Berkeley) concert band and baritone saxophone in the UC marching band. He wasn’t very musically talented, but made up for his shortcomings with enthusiasm and devotion. At Berkeley, he majored in physics for one year then switched to civil engineering.
After graduation he worked as a surveyor for the California Division of Highways (now Caltrans) for a few months, principally on the scenic Highway 1 in the Big Sur area, then spent two years in the US Army Corps of Engineers, where he was stationed in Germany with the 79th Engineer Battalion (Construction). While in the 79th, he supervised various construction projects, the largest of which was a helicopter parking pad near Hanau, Germany, and took part in the cleanup after an extremely damaging earthquake in Agadir, Morocco. After his required military service was over, he worked again for the California Division of Highways’ San Luis Obispo district, then earned a Masters degree in civil engineering at the University of California’s Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering. After completing his degree, he again worked for the California Division of Highways’ San Luis Obispo district.
In February 1963 he married Gerda Kircher who was then a student at a professional language school in Germany. They lived a few months in San Luis Obispo, then several years in Daly City, just outside San Francisco. During that time they had two daughters, Sylvia in 1964 and Christine in 1966. Sylvia is now a veterinarian and Christine has a degree of Science in Nursing from University of Toronto and has worked as a public health nurse for 22 years.
In San Francisco, Dr. Hurdle spent several years designing highways, then after obtaining his licence as a Professional Engineer, became involved in “freeway operations.” During this time he conducted a study of the operation of a segment of Interstate Highway 580 in Oakland, California, that led to a truck ban, making it the only Interstate Highway in the US where trucks were not allowed – and was in charge of conducting the first “Functional Classification” study of the San Francisco Bay Area. He was also chairman of the San Francisco district’s “Safety Review Committee”, which reviewed all plans for state highway projects as well as the finished projects for safety hazards and spent a good deal of time observing rush hour operation of the area’s freeways.
At the end of 1968 he returned to Berkeley’s Department of Civil Engineering to work on a PhD program – a program that included only two Civil Engineering courses in two years of course work, the rest being in Statistics and Operations Research. Until starting work on his dissertation, he worked half time for the California Division of Highways, reviewing all state highway projects in the Bay Area for traffic handling capacity, a job that involved a considerable amount of redesign of signalized intersections.
His dissertation, done under the supervision of Gordon Newell, dealt with bus scheduling, though he maintained an interest in traffic engineering, the area to which he returned for most of his later research work.
After finishing his PhD in 1971 he worked as a research engineer at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering, doing mainly teaching, but continuing his research into public transit planning.
In 1975, he moved to Toronto with his family, taking a teaching position at the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil Engineering. During his years there, he taught undergraduate courses in Transportation Operations, Traffic Engineering Surveying, Probability Theory and Mathematics (2nd year), as well as graduate courses in Highway Design, Queuing Theory and Stochastic Aspects of Transportation. He was also involved in teaching at his Department’s Survey Camp (a third year course) and was in charge of the camp for several years.
Starting in the early 1970’s and for many years he was an Associate Editor of Transportation Science, the transportation journal of the Operations Society of America. He also devoted a great deal of time to the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Highway Capacity and Level of Service, the committee responsible for preparing and publishing the “Highway Capacity Manual.”
After coming to Toronto his research efforts were almost entirely devoted to highway traffic issues, with the exception of a small amount of work on public transit planning, and a single paper on highway design, a leftover from his days as a working engineer, where developing new methods of analysis was not considered research but just part of the job. However, even though he regarded himself as better at research than at teaching, he gradually found that his teaching responsibilities left little time for research.
In 2001 Professor Hurdle retired from the University of Toronto, though he taught Traffic Engineering to fourth year students one additional time after formal retirement. He thoroughly enjoyed his years of retirement, spending time in his native California and the West and in Europe. He was diagnosed with a kind of Parkinsons and died from complications of that illness.
Tributes
Very saddened to hear about the passing of Van Hurdle. He was a great professor and helped me enormously when I was doing my PhD. His transportation operations course was one of the most useful in my professional career. He also greatly influenced my outlook regarding the importance of (and my responsibility for) considering the visual impact of civil works – particularly highway design. He will always remain in my heart one of those gifted and great teachers and mentors to whom I owe so much. – Dr. Lloyd McCoomb, Consultant
Delighted to see Professor Hurdle being remembered. He taught traffic engineering, not for the fainthearted, to numerous cohorts of engineers. He was also passionate about teaching mathematics. Though, I didn’t last long as his TA in the engineering mathematics course. – Professor Murtaza Haider, Ryerson University
I’d like to mention how much Van added to our life and work together in ISTTT through his warmth and sense of humour and generosity in recognising the contribution of each participant he happened to be in conversation with. It is wonderful when we read how much he taught over the years to think how many former students must have valued and remember these qualities alongside his deep scholarly understanding of our field. – Professor Richard Allsop, University College London
Van Hurdle who was an extraordinary professional and an excellent follower of Gordon Newell. For those who didn’t know him, please see one of his classic papers on transit scheduling: Hurdle, V.F. (1973). Minimum Cost Schedules for a Public Transportation Route. Transportation Science, 7 (2), 109-157. – Professor Avishai Ceder, Technion, Israel
Yes, we lost one of the public transportation pioneers. It is sad. And just to add to Avi’s message, here is another seminal paper by Van (it pushed the boundaries of continuum approximations): https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/trsc.9.1.1. Van also was curious about traffic flow theory. Few people know that Gordon Newell produced his simplified theory of kinematic waves following a question Van had posed to him… – Professor Carlos Daganzo, UC Berkeley
Professor Van Hurdle was one of a rare breed who completed a PhD after practicing as a highway and traffic engineer for many years. His understanding of freeway and arterial traffic issues, from decades of observations, was phenomenal. His models were theoretically sound but also made practical sense. …Van will be sorely missed by legions of Toronto students. …He was a kind and gregarious man. He was also devoted to Gerda and their daughters. …I am grateful to Professor Van Hurdle for enticing me to work on transit. – Professor Chan Wirasinghe, University of Calgary
I was greatly saddened to learn of Van Hurdle’s passing. I have many happy memories of meetings with Van and of discussions with him, in Germany, at ISTTT and at Toronto. – Professor Benjamin Heydecker, University College London
Professor Hurdle will be dearly missed and remembered as an outstanding teacher and a great scholar in transportation research. – Professor William H.K. Lam, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
I feel honoured to be one of Dr. Hurdle’s students when I took his graduate course on Queuing Theory in Winter 2000. That was the last time he offered this course. He was and still is a real inspiration to me. I hope I am now carrying on his legacy by teaching a similar graduate course, here at UofC, a course full of his presence, his words and his contributions. – Professor Lina Kattan, University of Calgary
The above tributes of the leading scholars speak to Van’s professional standing and reputation. Let it also be said that he was a valued colleague, a good and kind person. – Professors Gerry Steuart and Ezra Hauer, University of Toronto