Every one relies on some kind of transportation system nearly every day.
Go- ing to work, shopping, dropping children at school and many other
cultural or social activities imply leaving home, and using some form of
transportation, which we expect tobe eflicient and reliable. Of course,
efliciency and reliabil- ity do not occur by chance, but require careful
and often relatively complex planning by transportation system managers,
both in the public and private sectors. It has long been recognized that
mathematics, and, more specifically, op- erations research is an
important tool of this planning process. However, the range of skills
required to cover both fields, even partially, is very large, and the
opportunities to gather people with this very diverse expertise are too
few. The organization of the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on "Opera-
tions Research and Decision Aid Methodologies in Traflic and
Transportation Management" in March 1997 in Balatonfüred, Hungary, was
therefore more than welcome and the group of people that gathered for a
very studious two weeks on the shores of the beautiful lake Balaton did
really enjoy the truly multidisciplinary and high scientific level of
the meeting. The purpose of the present volume is to report, in a
chronological order, the various questions that were considered by the
lecturers and the' students at the institute. After a general
introduction to the topic, the first week focused on issues related to
traflic modeling, mostly in an urban context.