Benedict Gunter Barkan Worked as Traffic Engineer

Benedict Gunter Barkan died unexpectedly on the morning of Dec. 12,2004 at Martha's Vineyard Hospital in Oak Bluffs. He was 79 yearsof age.

He was born on April 21, 1925, in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany toCharlotte Milch Barkan and Georg Barkan. The family lived in Germanyuntil 1929 when they moved to Tallinn, Estonia where his father wasProfessor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the Universityof Tartu. In 1938 the family moved to Brookline, where Professor Barkanhad been offered a teaching position at Boston University.

Ben attended Brookline High School and the College of Engineering atTufts University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in civilengineering in 1946, and later completed post-graduate study in theemerging field of traffic engineering at the Yale University Bureau ofHighway Traffic where he received a certificate of transportation in1948.

He met his future wife, Glenna Kelley Barkan, of Amesbury, inNovember 1948 on an alumni trip to the Tufts Mountain Club in Plymouth,N.H. He and Glenna were married in Amesbury a year later. Ben and Glennaenjoyed hiking, mountain climbing, camping and skiing throughoutnorthern New England. Ben's subsequent interests includedattending Long Wharf in New Haven, Conn., monthly for 25 years, folkmusic, square dancing and later taking trips in their small recreationalvehicle. Ben had a lifelong interest in transportation, particularlyurban and passenger rail transport. He enjoyed watching trains, visitingtrain stations and transit systems, geography, maps, looking atarchitecture, reading, especially transportation engineering and cityplanning magazines, listening to Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Telemann, etc.He especially enjoyed his family, including his cats.

Ben's first job was selling Good Humor ice cream in Cambridgefrom a bicycle-driven vehicle at age 15. His first professionalemployment was with the city of Boston Planning Department in 1946following his graduation from Tufts. After a break to complete hisstudies at Yale, he returned to Boston for a year before taking a jobwith the city of Providence as a traffic and transportation engineer in1949. He moved to a job in city planning in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1951, andthen back to New Haven in 1956 where he worked as a teacher andresearcher at Yale for a year. He moved to consulting in 1957 with thetraffic engineering firm of Wilbur Smith & Associates. He laterworked with Frederic R. Harris, Inc. in Stamford, Conn. and Cox andNichols in Branford, Conn. His work included urban transportation andregional planning, traffic engineering and site planning. He directedprojects throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and in severalEuropean countries. In 1976, he and Alan Mess formed their owntransportation consulting firm, Barkan and Mess Associates, where heheld the position of president until his retirement in 1995. He remainedactive with the firm working part-time as a senior associate until 2002.

Ben and Glenna lived in Branford, Conn. from 1955 onward. Theystarted coming to the Vineyard in 1979 for vacations, buying a condo inHidden Cove in 1993. In 1997 they bought their present home on PondviewDrive in Oak Bluffs. They divided their time between Connecticut and theVineyard, spending an increasing amount of time on the Vineyard untilNovember 2003 when they moved here full time.

Ben's membership in professional organizations included theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers, Institute of TransportationEngineers, American Planning Association, American Institute ofCertified Planners and the International Council of Shopping Centers. Inhis later years, he was also an active member in Rotary.

Articles, talks and publications included A Parking Meter RevenueContour Map, Traffic Engineering, Latest Methods of Determining UrbanHighway Routes, the Civil Engineer in Urban Planning and Development,San Juan, Puerto Rico, Traffic and Transportation Aspects of RegionalShopping Center Development, University of Shopping Centers, Chicago,Ill., Developing Parking Programs for Tomorrow'sEnvironment-Reporter's Summary, Transportation FacilitiesWorkshop: Passenger, Freight and Parking, American Society of CivilEngineers, New York, Retrofitting Shopping Centers for Today'sTraffic, Workshop on the Management of Access to Highways and LocalRoads, University of Connecticut, and at the Transportation ResearchBoard annual meeting in 1985.

In addition to his wife, Glenna, Ben leaves his three children: hisdaughter, Susan Elisabeth Barkan, Ph.D. who is an epidemiologist withthe Department of Public Health, Seattle and King County and herdaughter, Eliza Barkan; his daughter, Sally Barkan, MLIS, assistantdirector at the Oak Bluffs Public Library; and his son, Christopher PaulLyman Barkan, Ph. D. who is an Associate Professor of RailroadEngineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, andChris's wife, Elizabeth Lyman Barkan and their two children,Charlotte and Phoebe Barkan.

Chapman, Cole and Gleason handled arrangements and the funeral tookplace on Dec. 17 at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Edgartown.His ashes will be strewn in the Atlantic Ocean in the spring.

Donations may be made in his memory to the Rotary CharitableFoundation, P.O. Box 1951, Edgartown, MA 02539.

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