Gerd-Axel Ahrens has been professor of transport planning at the Technical University ahrensDresden since October 2000. In Dresden he is chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board for Dresden’s Mobility Master Plan 2025, member of the Scientific Advisory board for public transport in the region and chairperson of the saxon section of the German Society of Transport Research (DVWG).
Before this, Gerd-Axel Ahrens was the head of the Department of Transport in the City of Bremen from 1991 to 2000. He was researcher (1985 to 1991) in the German Environmental Protection Agency (UBA). From 1983 to 1985 he was trained as a “Baureferendar”, a qualification for head-positions in municipal administrations in Germany. From 1977 to 1978, he worked as a transport consultant in Vienna/Austria.
He studied civil engineering in Braunschweig and as a Fulbright exchange student at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, U.S.A. until 1977. His doctoral work he did as a research assistant at the Technical University of Braunschweig from 1978 to 1983.
As member of the “Scientific Advisory Council” of the Federal Transport Minister in Germany he was also actively involved in German transport politics. His special research areas are sustainable integrated urban mobility planning, mobility research and integrated urban road design.