About Me

Welcome to my TU Delft blog.  My name is Alex Sandoval, and I am a senior civil engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.  I grew up in San Bernardino County, California, so the cooler weather in the Delft will be a major bonus during this trip.  By completing this course, I hope to gain a European perspective that will help me innovate and excel in North American transportation.

I decided to apply for this trip because the Netherlands seems to have mastered bike and pedestrian integration into traffic.  Also, I want to find a way to make people divorce their cars-- or at least rely on/use them less.  Last summer, I studied abroad in Peru.  While I was there, I met only a handful of people that owned cars.  The majority of the population used buses and taxis.  In my five weeks there, I found that I did not need my own personal car as much as American car companies had led me to believe.  As a result of last summer, I only drive when absolutely needed.  This was an easy change to make; it required leaving five minutes earlier (for most trips).  Not only was it easy, but I also saved on gas money!  I went from filling up my truck once every two weeks to once a month.  This decreased consumption saved me about $80 per month.  I hope that this trip will equip me with the tools to convince people around me to think about using multimodal transportation more often.

Thank you for reading this blog post, I will keep posting as the course progresses.

~Alex