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    Transportation Planning: The Profession of Transportation

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    Emily Faith Belcena
    The document discusses three key areas of transportation engineering: 1) Transportation planning which involves defining problems, analyzing data, evaluating alternatives, and forecasting future traffic needs to determine the best project. Planners must understand economics, statistics, and communicating with the public. 2) Transportation infrastructure design which specifies all features of transportation systems to ensure smooth and efficient functioning according to natural laws. The design process results in detailed plans used for cost estimates and construction. For highways, designers select dimensions and geometries. 3) Highway design in particular involves selecting longitudinal and cross-sectional dimensions, pavement widths, and structural requirements while ensuring traffic flow and control. Designers must understand civil engineering topics and focus on layout, cross-section

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    Transportation Planning: The Profession of Transportation

    Uploaded by

    Emily Faith Belcena
    26 views1 page
    The document discusses three key areas of transportation engineering: 1) Transportation planning which involves defining problems, analyzing data, evaluating alternatives, and forecasting future traffic needs to determine the best project. Planners must understand economics, statistics, and communicating with the public. 2) Transportation infrastructure design which specifies all features of transportation systems to ensure smooth and efficient functioning according to natural laws. The design process results in detailed plans used for cost estimates and construction. For highways, designers select dimensions and geometries. 3) Highway design in particular involves selecting longitudinal and cross-sectional dimensions, pavement widths, and structural requirements while ensuring traffic flow and control. Designers must understand civil engineering topics and focus on layout, cross-section

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    Transportation Planning

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    The document discusses three key areas of transportation engineering: 1) Transportation planning which involves defining problems, analyzing data, evaluating alternatives, and forecasting future traffic needs to determine the best project. Planners must understand economics, statistics, and communicating with the public. 2) Transportation infrastructure design which specifies all features of transportation systems to ensure smooth and efficient functioning according to natural laws. The design process results in detailed plans used for cost estimates and construction. For highways, designers select dimensions and geometries. 3) Highway design in particular involves selecting longitudinal and cross-sectional dimensions, pavement widths, and structural requirements while ensuring traffic flow and control. Designers must understand civil engineering topics and focus on layout, cross-section

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    26 views1 page

    Transportation Planning: The Profession of Transportation

    Uploaded by

    Emily Faith Belcena
    The document discusses three key areas of transportation engineering: 1) Transportation planning which involves defining problems, analyzing data, evaluating alternatives, and forecasting future traffic needs to determine the best project. Planners must understand economics, statistics, and communicating with the public. 2) Transportation infrastructure design which specifies all features of transportation systems to ensure smooth and efficient functioning according to natural laws. The design process results in detailed plans used for cost estimates and construction. For highways, designers select dimensions and geometries. 3) Highway design in particular involves selecting longitudinal and cross-sectional dimensions, pavement widths, and structural requirements while ensuring traffic flow and control. Designers must understand civil engineering topics and focus on layout, cross-section

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    of 1

    Chapter 1 The Profession of Transportation 19

    century, transportation engineers have been employed to build the nation’s railroads,
    the interstate highway system, and rapid transit systems in major cities, airports, and
    turnpikes. Each decade has seen a new national need for improved transportation
    services.
    It can be expected that in the twenty-first century, heavy emphasis will be placed
    on the rehabilitation of the highway system, including its surfaces and bridges, as well
    as on devising a means to ensure improved safety and utilization of the existing system
    through traffic control, information technology, and systems management. Highway
    construction will be required, particularly in suburban areas. Building of roads, high-
    ways, airports, and transit systems is likely to accelerate in less-developed countries,
    and the transportation engineer will be called on to furnish the services necessary to
    plan, design, build, and operate highway systems throughout the world. Each of the
    specialties within the transportation infrastructure engineering field is described next.

    Transportation Planning
    Transportation planning deals with the selection of projects for design and construc-
    tion. The transportation planner begins by defining the problem, gathering and ana-
    lyzing data, and evaluating various alternative solutions. Also involved in the process
    are forecasts of future traffic; estimates of the impact of the facility on land use, the
    environment, and the community; and determination of the benefits and costs that
    will result if the project is built. The transportation planner investigates the physical
    feasibility of a project and makes comparisons between various alternatives to deter-
    mine which one will accomplish the task at the lowest cost—consistent with other cri-
    teria and constraints.
    A transportation planner must be familiar with engineering economics and other
    means of evaluating alternative systems, be knowledgeable in statistics and data-
    gathering techniques, as well as in computer applications for data analysis and travel
    forecasting, and be able to communicate with the public and policy makers.

    Transportation Infrastructure Design


    Transportation design involves the specification of all features of the transportation
    system to assure that it will function smoothly, efficiently, and in accord with physical
    laws of nature. The design process results in a set of detailed plans that can be used
    for estimating the facility costs and for carrying out its construction. For highway
    design, the process involves the selection of dimensions for all geometrical features,
    such as the longitudinal profile, vertical curves and elevations, the highway cross sec-
    tion, pavement widths, shoulders, rights-of-way, drainage ditches, and fencing. The
    design processes also include the pavement and structural requirements for base
    courses and the concrete or asphalt surface material. Highway design also includes
    bridges and drainage structures as well as provision for traffic control devices, road-
    side rest areas, and landscaping. The highway designer must be proficient in civil engi-
    neering subjects (such as soil mechanics, hydraulics, land surveying, pavement design,
    and structural design), and is concerned primarily with the geometric layout of the
    road, its cross section, paving materials, roadway thickness, and traffic-control
    devices. Special appurtenances (such as highway bridges and drainage structures) are
    usually designed by specialists in these areas.

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