The Alan M Voorhees Legacy Project (AMV Legacy Project) is a collection of historically significant materials archived at Rutgers University honoring the life of Alan Manners Voorhees (1922-2005). Voorhees was a pioneer in transportation planning and engineering during a transformational period of transportation development in America. The collection is accessible to researchers seeking a better understanding of the many changes in transportation in America in the last half of the 20th century both in terms of technology and the many policy changes instituted by governments at all levels to increase the benefits and minimize the adverse impacts of transportation investments in all modes.
Background
Returning from service in WWII, Voorhees developed new approaches to transportation planning using mathematical models and high speed computers then becoming available for civilian use. In 1961 he established Alan M Voorhees and Assoc., (AMV Inc.) a transportation planning and engineering firm that grew rapidly into a major consultancy and within which many of the leaders in the field began their careers and in turn spun off many other consultancies and took leadership positions in important transportation organizations, both public and private. The firm did important work that influenced the planning and design of significant portions of the built environment both in America and around the world.
All of this occurred during the last half of the 20th century, a period when major shifts were occurring in the way Americans lived and traveled, e.g. the expansion of the suburbs, the shift from public transit to private cars, from trains to planes, from downtown shopping to outlying malls, and the construction of the interstate Highway system. There was also an increase in sensitivity to the impacts of transportation on air and water quality, to energy use, economic impacts, and climate change. Both government and the private sector had many responses to these changes–some successful, some not so much. These included new towns, light rail transit, high speed rail, bus rapid transit, paratransit, transportation system management, ridesharing, use of mathematical models and computers on forecasting of travel demand and alternatives analysis, community participation in urban planning and park and ride to name a few. AMV Inc. was a major player in such innovations and these and many other approaches can be found in its many reports.
By 2020, most of the people closely tied to AMV Inc. had reached retirement age and had become concerned about the many reports, photos and other memorabilia on their bookshelves from their AMV days, that would likely be trashed after their passing and they sought a place where such material might be preserved. There was also concern about the need for oral histories, as their own memories could be useful to historians and other scholars as they search for ways to better understand this significant period in our nation’s history.
These and other concerns prompted Thomas Deen, one of five original partners of AMV Inc. and who rose to become President of the firm when Voorhees moved to academia in 1978, to establish The AMV Legacy Project. Early on he enlisted several colleagues who shared his concerns and belief that their association with AMV had positively impacted their careers and sought to honor that association by insuring that his legacy be remembered by future generations. They also believed that a collection of materials associated with his life would be a useful source of valuable information for historians and other scholars seeking a better understanding of the history of transportation during this transformational epoch. This small group formed themselves into a Steering Committee comprised of Deen (Chairman), Wayne Kittelson, Steven Lockwood, and Robert Skinner. The Steering Committee fleshed out a preliminary work program and the AMV Legacy Project was thus conceived. While the committee agreed to work without compensation, a budget was established to cover out of pocket expenses and procure any professional assistance that might be required.
The Voorhees family had earlier provided an endowment for the establishment of the Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) at Rutgers University and a small collection of materials had already been archived there as part of a special library collection. Deen and Skinner were familiar with the work of the VTC as they also served on the VTC Advisory Board. The Steering Committee quickly came to believe that Rutgers would be a logical place for the permanent archiving of materials produced by the AMV Legacy Project. Rutgers officials were approached and welcomed and encouraged the work proposed by the committee. Scott Voorhees, AMV’s son agreed to provide initial funding and was added to the committee both to provide financial oversight, to assist in assembly of materials on his father’s life, and because he had professional expertise in planning and construction of museum style exhibits.
Project Details
The resulting AMV Legacy Project comprises three major components:
The AMV Legacy Exhibit (link)
A professionally designed and constructed museum type exhibit with multiple panels including text, photos, and graphics that portray major milestones of Voorhees’s life and the transportation firm he established–Alan M. Voorhees and Associates (AMV Inc.) This exhibit is housed permanently in the offices of the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. The AMV Legacy Exhibit was overseen by a subcommittee composed of Robert Skinner (Chairman), Scott Voorhees, Thomas Deen, and by two members of Rutgers Staff, Robert Noland, and Jon Carnegie and was assisted by design consultant Jakob Janiga.
The AMV Inc. Special Library Collection at Kittelson Associates
A collection of AMV Inc. related correspondence, reports, papers, articles, reunion programs, and photographs, assembled and archived under the direction of Wayne Kittelson (Chairman) and Thomas Deen. This collection had its origins in the close personal and professional bonds formed between many of the former AMV Inc. employees who began holding periodic reunions beginning during the 1990’s and continuing in 2000, 2008 and 2017.
After the 2000 reunion, an attendee, Ed Herlihy, established the AMVreunion2000 group on the Yahoo website platform that provided a convenient way for individuals to communicate with one another. Shortly thereafter, Herlihy turned the group over to Thomas Deen who became the custodian of the group until 2020 when Yahoo ceased support for such groups, and Deen turned to Wayne Kittelson who established the AMV Friends group (link), on another web platform and became the custodian—along with Deen—of the new site. In 2017 Kittelson chaired the last AMV Inc. reunion held at Tysons Corner VA and organized a repository for photographs, videos, and other material taken from that and earlier reunions.
When in 2021 Deen organized the AMV Legacy Project the Steering Committee realized that the Kittelson’s web site and archive was a convenient collection point for reports, photos and other memorabilia held by AMV family and friends , from their personal collections and from earlier reunions. Much of the material has been scanned, digitized, and can be found in searchable format at (insert link). This site is conceived as a convenient site for collection of staff resumes, collection of reports and information related to AMV spin off firms, and appropriate biographical data on AMV related staff.
The AMV Special Collection at Rutgers Library
A special Alan M. Voorhees Collection at Rutgers University consisting of reports, articles, publications, correspondence, documents, photographs and other memorabilia related to Mr. Voorhees and AMV Inc. This collection, initially small, predated the AMV Legacy project, but is better positioned to provide long term archiving of materials than Kittelson’s. Initially the two collections will be connected by hyperlinks, but at some point in the future it is anticipated that the Kittelson collection will be moved to Rutgers.
Additionally the AMV Legacy project will conduct and add a dozen new oral histories into both the Rutgers and Kittelson collections.(See Alan M Voorhees Oral History Initiative) These will primarily be interviews of former AMV Inc. employees to better understand the role of AMV Inc in shaping the built American and Western world infrastructure and the impact and effectiveness of government transportation policies in the last half of the 20th century. They also will shed light on the impact of the AMV business culture that seemed to spawn a host of other private consultancies both in America and abroad.
Finally the project discovered that a large number of AMV Inc. reports had been archived in libraries around the country and many of these have been digitized into a searchable format so that scholars can access them on line. (See Resources from Alan M. Voorhees & Associates). The AMV Legacy project has prepared an annotated bibliography of these and other reports that can be accessed on their website at (insert link). This work was overseen by Steve Lockwood.
As of the time of this writing, March 2022, much of the AMV Legacy project is still underway, but it is anticipated that this description of the project will be updated as work is completed, and hypelinks can be inserted and/or modified to take interested parties to specific sites where more details can be provided.