Does anyone have a transportation-related job? Is there any value

>>1086293
I work as an entry level traffic engineer in a large consulting company. We have two main teams in our transportation division: traffic engineers and transportation planners. The planners have a wide array of backgrounds. One of my planning friends had a degree in geography for example but still here he is as a planner.

The traffic engineers generally have a minimum of a BS in Civil Engineering. Some will also have a MS in Civil with (ideally) some focus on transportation. I will use my own experience as an example here. My degree (BS Civil) was pretty expensive BUT I'm making quite a nice salary even in my first year. So is there value? I say yes, absolutely. I'm not sure of the planners' salaries, but I can say my more experienced planning friend in the company is supporting a wife and kid in Manhattan which implies he can't be doing that bad.

I would say if you are genuinely interested in the field, you should really look into pursuing it. Traffic and transportation engineering is a real thing. You can believe this or not about salaries: I was offered $53k starting for a position at the NYCDOT. I was offered more than that for a position at a private consulting company. There is money to be made. You can sort of take the benchmark Civil engineer rates and assume a traffic engineer will probably be making similar amounts since we hold the same degrees. If that sounds like a good amount to you, I say go for it. I'm biased to say stick to the engineering side because a technical background may be worth more and seems like safer bet to me. We always need engineers.

>>1086503
Also, at the end of the day you would still have a degree in Civil which can be used to help you get into other fields: structural, geotech, etc. So, even if you want to focus on transportation, you won't necessarily be locked into it forever, you'll have options and other engineering skills.

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Im in the process of finishing my BS (its a mix of computer and transport science) and currently working as a student employee for a one of the agencies in pic related. After the thesis I'll enroll in a transportation-only MS program because coding sucks, and there is still a lot of demand for specialised transportation people, especially here in Germany.

The people I work with have different backgrounds, most of the younger ones studied Transportation Science or something similar, the rest come from Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering or various Business programs. Most people I've met while studying and working are passionate about what they're doing, and had no trouble finding work in their preferred field. If you're passionate about transportation, I'd say it's a good basis for a carreer. We'll always need people to at least maintain the networks we've built.