This year's winner of the Cuperus Prize of the KIVI Traffic and Transport Section is Rik Schakenbos. Department chairman Jan Ploeger presented the prize on 2 November at the dinner preceding the National Traffic Science Congress in Zwolle. The winner of this prestigious prize graduated from TU Twente with the topic: ''Valuation of interchange in a multi-modal public transport move''.

Knowledge about this valuation is very important for making multi-modal traffic model forecasts even better. Besides excellent content (creativity, innovation, breadth, systematics and consistency) and approach (depth, substantiation, and clarity/readability), the relevance to the field was decisive for this award.

Rik Schakenbos' graduation work was chosen from seven reports/abstracts submitted by several universities, including TU Delft, TU Twente and VU Adam. TU Eindhoven, Radboud University, RU Groningen were not represented this time. Of two reports, only good abstracts were sent along and these stood out less as a result. What was striking was that a number of good submissions mainly related economics and infrastructure. An example is the study ''Valuing Iconic Infrastructure Projects'' such as the Erasmus Bridge. Interesting, because spending more on beautiful infrastructure is, in these times where every dime is turned over, a high-profile topic. There was also a study on the optimal tax rates for petrol and diesel in Europe. From a business point of view, the study into the selection process of KLM pilots when taking the amount of paraffin on a flight was also important. In the end, the final battle was between two reports that both had public transport as their subject.

Menno Yap ended up being runner-up with a fascinating story on the robustness of a public transport network seen from the passenger's point of view. At TU Delft, he studied and evaluated multi-level public transport networks. He came up with practical recommendations to improve the robustness and thus reliability of the system.

Cuperus Prize

The Traffic and Transport Section of the Royal Institute of Engineers (KIVI), in collaboration with CROW and Royal HaskoningDHV, once every two years awards the Cuperus Prize for the best graduation work at a Dutch university in the field of traffic and transport. With the Cuperus Prize, KIVI wants to keep alive the memory of a great man in the field of Traffic and Transport Engineering.

We will award the Cuperus Prize again in 2018.