by Tyler Reeb, California State University, Long Beach

Since graduating in 2003 with his Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from USC’s Price School of Public Policy, Sandipan Bhattacharjee has launched his own transportation-consulting firm while also keeping close ties with his alma mater as an adjunct faculty member.

Bhattacharjee describes his consulting firm, Translutions, Inc., as “a solutions oriented transportation planning and traffic engineering company.”

As cofounder and principal of Translutions, Bhattacharjee prepares technical analyses of land development, transportation infrastructure projects, parking, and traffic impact and operation analyses for clients throughout Southern California. He has extensive experience in preparing transportation analysis for inclusion in California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) documents.

Bhattacharjee also teaches a master’s level course on urban transportation planning and management at the Price School. “When I started working in 2003, I had no idea what a transportation planning consultant did,” he said. “After a few years, I created this course based on whatever I had learned over the years.”

"The curriculum for the course remains dynamic," Bhattacharjee said. “The class is a little different each year to keep up with the way transportation analyses are conducted in California based on changes to CEQA.”

One particular point of interest about Translutions that Bhattacharjee noted was that the firm’s cofounder and other partner is also his wife, Deepali Chausalkar, who also graduated from USC with dual master’s degrees in urban planning and transportation engineering. “We met at USC,” he said. “She was a research assistant at METRANS.”