Revamping of the Caltrans Traffic Operations Academy

The traffic operations academy has been conducted in-house at the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) for more than 20 years to give junior engineers working knowledge on fundamental traffic operations. In the past two years, the academy was revamped to emphasize the Caltrans system management philosophy, refresh the course material, and most importantly, improve the way it was delivered. The revamped academy was very well received by the students and won an award from management. In this paper, the experience and lessons learned from the revamp of the academy are presented, with special focus on course design and course delivery strategies and tips. It is hoped that such experience will benefit all DOT in-house training programs in other states.