Transportation Fundamentals

What is Transportation Planning?

Transportation planning is a process of defining policies, goals, investments, and designs to prepare for future needs to achieve safer, faster, comfortable, convenient, economical and environment-friendly movement of people and goods to their destinations.
This planning process involves the evaluation, assessment, design, and siting of transport facilities e.g. streets, highways, bike lanes, and public transport facilities.
Traditional transportation planning has following steps: defining goals and objectives, identifying problems, generating alternatives, evaluating alternatives, and developing plans
Planning is commonly scale specific and multidimensional.
Transportation planning can be a highly technical process, which often relies on computer models and other sophisticated tools to simulate the complex interactions of transportation system performance.
Lately new aspects are added to transportation planning : transit oriented development, incremental planning, collaborative planning, and political bargaining etc.

Why Transportation Planning is required?

To design transportation facilities according to new regulations or intervention of modifications in the regulations
To accommodate technology changes
For better planning of resources like funding
To make transportation facilities sustainable
To provide better transportation equity – provide transportation options to all citizens irrespective of their socio-economic status
To evaluate current transportation systems and make them more efficient

Functions of Transportation Planning

Efficiency

Effective use of transportation system
Use of Technology
Land use and resource controlling

Quality

Provide good service to users

Equity

Should provide access to users across all socio-economic groups
Should be sustainable in social, environmental and climate-impact wise

Characteristics of Transportation Planning

Determining transportation needs
Making alternative transportation plans
Evaluating different alternatives based benefit/cost and other parameters
Checking safety, ease, convenience, environmental friendly-ness
Establishing relationship with other modes of transportation
Checking how transportation impact surrounding areas in following areas: wealth, health and education
Lately, Planners starting to make sure transportation system serves people of all socio-economic levels ~transportation equity

Transportation Planning Process

The planning process begins with an understanding of the socio-demographic, land-use, and economic context within which a transportation system operates.

The next step is developing a community or study area vision.

The next step is to acquire more specific information about what the vision means. What is the desired performance of the transportation system?

Goals and objectives can also lead to the identification of system performance measures.

Collecting and analyzing data, the next step of the planning process, is key to understanding the problems and potential challenges facing the transportation system and the surrounding community.

Evaluation is the process of synthesizing the information produced during the analysis step

Transportation System Components

Functional Classification
System Extent
System Use
System Performance i.e. Mobility , Accessibility and Safety
System Condition

Functional Classification of Transportation System

Transportation System Performance

	Traffic	Mobility	Accessibility
Definition of Transportation	Vehicle travel	Person and goods movement	Ability to obtain goods, services and activities
Units of Measure	Vehicle miles	Person-miles and ton-miles	Trips, generalized costs
Modes Considered	Automobile and truck	Automobile, truck and transit	Automobile, truck, transit,cycling and walking
Common Indicators	Vehicle traffic volumes and speeds, roadway level of service, cost per vehicle mile, parking convenience	Person travel volumes and speeds, road and transit level of service, cost per person-mile, travel convenience	Quality of available transportation choices, distribution of destinations, cost per trip
Assumptions	Maximum motor vehicle travel and speed	Maximum personal travel and goods movement	Maximum transport choice and cost efficiency
Consideration of Land Use	Treats land use as in input, unaffected by transportation decisions	Recognizes that land use can affect travel choices	Recognizes that land use has major impacts on transportation
Favored transportation improvement strategies	Roadway and parking facility improvements to increase capacity, speed and safety	Transportation system improvements that increase capacity, speed and safety	Management strategies and improvements that increase transport system efficiency and safety
Implications for travel demand management	Generally considers vehicle travel reductions undesirable, except if congestion is extreme	Supports TDM strategies that improve personal and freight mobility	Supports TDM whenever it is cost effective

Transit Performance (some examples only)

Service Effectiveness and Efficiency
System accessibility (Coverage, EJ, Connectivity)
Bus Stop Inventory and Design
Park-and-Ride
Paratransit (ADA Paratransit improvements)
Fare Equity
Major Service Change Policy
Safety (Incidents, facility, security management) Lately, Safety and Environmental Impact are also considered as Performance Indicators

Urban Population Characterstics

Population Characteristics

Population growth – including age based distribution
Household characteristics & vehicle ownership – income levels, number of people
Distribution of spatial growth – sub-urban, rural and urban areas Reliable data is avialable from US Census Bureau - PUMS

Travel Characterstics

Travel Purpose

Work/School
Shopping
Recreational
Other

Travel Patterns

How many trips in day home–to-work, home-to-other and non-home based

Temporal Patterns

Terminology used in Travel Characterstics Data

ADT- Average Daily Traffic: if data is collected less than year
AADT- Average Annual Daily Traffic: if data is collected for through out the year
AAWT- Average Annual Weekday Traffic: daily traffic adjusted only for weekdays
Hourly Traffic: traffic volume during an hour
Short-term counts: traffic counts collected for less than a week
Vehicle Classification: traffic by type of vehicles
VMT-Vehicle Miles Traveled: traffic volume multiplied by distance
Average vehicle occupancy: number of persons in a vehicle
Traffic density: vehicles per lane per mile
Lane capacity: number vehicles that can be accommodated in a lane per mile

Relationship between functional classes and travel characteristics

Functional Classification	Distance Served (and Length of Route)	Access Points	Speed Limit	Distance between Routes	Usage (AADT and DVMT)	Significance	Number of Travel Lanes
Arterial	Longest	Few	Highest	Longest	Highest	Statewide	More
Collector	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium
Local	Shortest	Many	Lowest	Shortest	Lowest	Local	Few

Traffic count techniques

Automatic Traffic Recorder
Weigh-In-Motion
Video-based counters
Coverage Counts
Hourly Counts
Screen line & Cordon line Counts

Travel Studies

To identify and understand the transportation problems, we use travel studies Travel time studies congestion, accessibility, mobility, point-to-point travel time etc. Travel surveys

External Surveys – post card, road side interviews, license plate, vehicle intercept etc.
Internal Surveys – Household surveys, Transit surveys, work place studies
Parking Needs Surveys
Parking space inventory, parking occupancy, duration & turnover and parker characteristics