Without mobility, our current economic structure, based on division of labour, would not be possible. The term mobility describes various things, including the possibility for humans and goods to physically change location. Effective mobility comes in the form of traffic. Looking at the causes and phenomena associated with traffic is traditionally a field of civil engineering, as transport has always guided the need and provisions of traffic construction. 
The job profile of a civil engineer comes almost exclusively from the need to plan, construct, and operate traffic systems, including stairs, underpasses, bridges, tunnels, harbours, railway stations, airports, canals, railways, and tramways. The field of activity in which civil engineers work has expanded considerably over the last 50 years, especially in transport. The work of civil engineers in transport now involves controlling traffic installations, the physics of pedestrian flows, computer-aided models to simulate traffic and traffic flows, as well as the interaction between housing structures and resource consumption in traffic. Looking at mobility is therefore essential to answer the question of how we can live more resource-friendly lifestyles in future.

Almost no other city in Germany is so inextricably tied to the history of traffic as Nuremberg. Germany’s first railway ran from Nuremberg to Fürth. Nuremberg has the largest pedestrian zone in Europe. Nuremberg central railway station is the largest through station in the world. Nuremberg is home to Germany’s first automated underground railway line and the first automatic-manual hybrid underground railway in the world. The Nuremberg port area is the third largest inland transshipment center in Europe. Nuremberg’s Langwasser district boasts Germany’s first car-free settlement. Johannes Scharrer, who established the first railway line in Germany, was also the founder of the Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences Nuremberg, the first university of applied sciences in Bavaria.

The Transportation lab is one of the newest labs at the Nuremberg Institute of Technology. The lab has a small technical library specializing in transport. The lab is in Building KB on the university’s main campus, directly east of Nuremberg’s old town in the Wöhrd district.