Chapter 1_CSEN 312_Transportation Engineering.docx - Copy

CHAPTER ONE: TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING
1.0 Introduction
Transportation relates to how people and goods achieve mobility. It is as old as humanity and
is closely associated with emergence of ancient and modern civilizations. A superficial look will
reveala close correlation between growth of urban centres and proximity of transport facilities.
Most Kenyan towns, for instance, have grown next to colonial railway and highway routes.
Towns likeMombasa, Nairobi, Nakuru, and Eldoret are just but a few. What then is transportation
engineering?
Transportation engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering that deals with the

applicationof technology and scientific principles to the planning, functional design, operation and
management of transportation facilities in order to provide for safe, rapid, comfortable,
convenient, economical,and environmentally compatible movement of goods and services. It
comprises aerospace, air, highway, pipeline, waterway, port, coastal, ocean and urban
transportation. It constitutes a third of the technical divisions within the civil engineering
profession.
Transportation engineering primarily involves planning, designing, construction and maintenance of

facilities that support air, highway, railroad, water, pipeline and space transportation. The mandate
of the transportation engineer has been expanded in the recent past to include logistics, network
analysis, financing and policy analysis.
Transport engineering has two faces. Planning and Design. The planning aspect relates to urban
planning and involves technical forecasting decisions and incorporation of political factors. This
iswhere traffic engineering principles come in handy. Use is made of the conventional transport
planning model that covers trip generation, trip distribution, modal split and route assignment.
Thedesign element on the other hand deals with sizing of transportation facilities i.e. how many lanes
or how much capacity the facility has, determination of quality and thicknesses of materials to be
usedin pavements and road/track geometrics.
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1.1 Modes of Transport
These are means by which goods and services achieve mobility. Modes of transport can be
groupedinto three broad categories based on the medium they exploit: land, water and air. Each
mode has its own requirements and features, and is adapted to serve the specific demands of
freight and passenger traffic. This gives rise to marked differences in the ways the modes are
deployed and utilized in different parts of the world. Recently, there has been a trend towards
integrating the modes through intermodality and linking the modes ever more closely into
production and distribution activities. At the same time, however, passenger and freight activity
is becoming increasingly separated across most modes.
1.1.1 Road transportation
This is the most dominant means of transport. Road infrastructures are large consumers of space
with the lowest level of physical constraints among the transportation modes. However,
physiographical constraints are significant in road construction with substantial additional costs
to overcome features such as rivers or rugged terrain. Road transportation has an average
operationalflexibility as vehicles can serve several purposes but are rarely able to move outside
roads. Road transport systems have high maintenance costs, both for the vehicles and
infrastructures. They aremainly linked to light industries where rapid movements of freight in
small batches are the norm.With containerization, road transportation has become a crucial link
in freight distribution.
1.1.2 Rail transportation
Railways are composed of traced paths on which are bound vehicles. They have an average level
ofphysical constraint linked to the types of locomotives and a low gradient is required, particularly
for freight. Heavy industries (that sprung in the 18th century) are linked with the growth of rail
transport systems. Containerization has improved the flexibility of rail transportation by linking
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it with roadand maritime modes. Gauges, however, vary around the world, often complicating the
integration of rail systems.
The gauge of a railway track is defined as the clear minimum perpendicular distance between
the inner faces of the two rails.
Figure 1.1
The different gauges can broadly be divided into the following four categories:
i. Broad Gauge: width 1676 mm to 1524 mm or 5’6” to 5’0”

ii. Standard Gauge: width 1435 mm and 1451 mm or 4’-8⅟2”
iii. Metre Gauge: width 1067 mm, 1000 mm and 915 mm or 3’-6”, 3’-33/8” and 3’-0”
iv. Narrow Gauge: width 762 mm and 610 mm or 2’-6” and 2’-0”.
1.1.3 Pipelines
Pipeline routes are practically unlimited as they can be laid on land or under the water. The
longestgas pipeline links Alberta to Sarnia (in Canada), and is 2,911 km in length. The longest oil
pipeline is the Transiberian, extending over 9,344 km from the Russian arctic oilfields in eastern
Siberia to Western Europe. Pipeline construction costs vary according to the diameter and
increase proportionally with the distance and with the viscosity of fluids (from gas, low viscosity,
to oil, high viscosity).
1.1.4 Maritime transportation
Because of the physical properties of water conferring buoyancy and limited friction, maritime
transportation is the most effective mode to move large quantities of cargo over long distances.
Main maritime routes are composed of oceans, coasts, seas, lakes, rivers and channels. However, due
to the location of economic activities, maritime circulation takes place on specific parts of the
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maritime space, particularly over the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. The construction of
channels, locks and dredging are attempts to facilitate maritime circulation by reducing discontinuity.
Maritime transportation has high terminal costs, since port infrastructures are among the most
expensive to build, maintain and improve. High inventory costs also characterize maritime
transportation. More than any other mode, maritime transportation is linked to heavy industries,
such as steel and petrochemical facilities adjacent to port sites.
1.1.5 Air transportation
The aircraft is the second fastest method of transport, after the rocket. Commercial jets can reach
upto 875 kilometres per hour while single-engine aircraft can reach up to 175 kilometres per hour.
Air routes are practically unlimited, but they are denser over the North Atlantic, inside North
America,Europe and over the North Pacific. Air transport constraints are multidimensional and
include thesite (a commercial plane needs about 3,300 meters of runway for landing and take-
off), climate, fogand aerial currents.
The majority of aircraft also need an airport with the infrastructure to receive maintenance,
restocking, refueling and for the loading/unloading of crew, cargo and passengers. While the
vast majority of aircraft land and take off on land, some are capable of taking off and landing
on ice, snow and calm water.

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CHAPTER ONE: TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING

Transportation engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering that deals with the

Transportation engineering primarily involves planning, designing, construction and maintenance of

1.1.1 Road transportation

1.1.2 Rail transportation

i. Broad Gauge: width 1676 mm to 1524 mm or 5’6” to 5’0”

1.1.4 Maritime transportation

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