Transportation Planning Resources

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Linking Research and Practice

As transportation engineers, our focus often rests, rightly, on the car. However, despite the amount of time I've spent in a car, many of the features that made my world rich were multimodal.

MTIA Position Paper

Multimodal Transportation Impact Assessment "Purpose and Need"

Multimodal Transportation Impact Assessment for Site Development An ITE Recommended Practice Update - 2018 Annual Meeting Packet Introduction

High-Speed Rail: What Does America's Largest Public Works Project Mean for Transportation Planners and Engineers?

Transportation Planning Handbook, 3rd Edition - Errata

The final report of the Edmonton Parking Management Study, prepared by Bunt & Associates in conjunction with the author and published in January 2013, identified a number of block faces where the installation of pay-parking was recommended. The City of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada requested that the consultants prepare a set of criteria that can be used to assess where the installation of curbside pay-parking can be justified. This paper outlines the author’s approach to create a criterion to meet the city’s needs.

The process of developing highways is incredibly risk adverse. Some would argue rightfully so, as major projects can dramatically change communities, and the unexpected consequences of poorly planned projects are present across the United States. Furthermore, almost all highway projects involve some level of public funding.

As an urban planner, I am particularly interested in what Automated Vehicle technology can do for our transportation systems and our cities. With evolving AV technology, we can already imagine some of the prospects. This article focuses on potential benefits and drawbacks of Autonomous Vehicles (AV), along with a call for policy action that attempts to speed the potential benefits while minimizing detrimental impacts.

As federal and state funding increasingly emphasizes economic and “triple bottom line” (economic, environmental, social/health) return on transportation investments, there is a need for methods to evaluate that return, particularly since the recession. For example, a key criterion of the Transportation Infrastructure Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program (which funds capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure) is that the project can demonstrate generation of economic development. The 2010 Government Accountability Office report on statewide transportation planning found that, “in selecting projects, states assigned greater importance to factors such as political and public support than to economic analysis of project benefits and costs.”

Human behavior presents a challenge to transportation engineering professionals. Engineers and planners who work hard to create and design a transportation system that works for the needs of its users recognize that understanding human behavior is the key to designing and managing safe and efficient sidewalks, pathways, streets, and highways. Human behavior and the subsequent decisions made by drivers, pedestrians, and other road users may seem baffling at times, so an understanding of such human behavior is a critical component of the planning, design, and management of the world in which these users live. Working alongside transportation planning and engineering professionals, human factors professionals bring an understanding of human factors, the scientific discipline which offers tools and knowledge that can aid transportation professionals in understanding human behavior and refining predictions related to planning and engineering choices.

In November 2015, the City of Bellingham, WA, USA completed $4.3 million in safety improvements on Alabama Street using the principals of Complete Streets and Bellingham’s “Complete Networks” approach to multimodal transportation planning.1,2 This complex 1.75-mile-long project wove together a partial road diet, six new pedestrian hybrid beacon (“HAWK”) signal crossings, a transit bus queue jump, relocation of five transit bus shelters, 114 curb ramp upgrades to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, 38 total driveways/alleyways reconstructed to meet ADA sidewalk standards, bike lanes, bike boulevards, bike boxes, center turn lanes, asphalt resurfacing, a reduced speed limit, and a c-curb median for access management to make Alabama Street safer for all users and to reconnect residential neighborhoods that had been bisected by this busy roadway. The transportation planning for these improvements took more than three years and, despite all of the safety benefits, the project was extremely controversial in the community.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” the adage by Peter Drucker goes. This especially holds true in transportation planning, where funding, forecasting, and political backing often rely on quantitative evidence of need and potential for improvement. In a field where data collection for vehicles is robust and often required, walking and bicycling are underrepresented. To effectively track and advocate for active transportation infrastructure and programs, having a set of performance measures directed towards these modes is essential. Active transportation performance measures enable comprehensive evaluations of walking and biking projects based on quantitative data.

Paradigm Transportation Solutions Limited is a consulting practice offering services in the specialized fields of transportation planning and traffic engineering, primarily in the southern Ontario (Greater Toronto Area), Canada market. Paradigm’s business model has a unique structure in the transportation consultant industry, with all 15 staff working from home offices across the region, including staff currently working from New Zealand and the Netherlands on Canadian projects. (Paradigm staff and ITE member Peter Kelly, who is based in New Zealand, is featured on page 26.) Th e fi rm’s partners recently shared insight with ITE Journal about the dynamics of this arrangement and how it is helping them do business.

In the 1920s, U.S. streets once filled with horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians gave way to streetcars traveling in the center of city streets flanked by automobiles. The mainstream adoption of automobiles began changing the way people and goods moved, and the traffic engineering profession emerged as a result. Th e early professionals included civil and electrical engineers, planners, and an economist who took an interest in providing safe and efficient traffic movement. They were largely self-taught, as there was little to no reference materials available to guide them, let alone standards to maintain consistency from city to city.

As noted in the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration’s publication Roundabouts: an Informational Guide, modern roundabouts (or roundabouts in this study) were developed in the 1960s to address problems associated with traffic circles. However, there still may exist some confusion between the roundabout and similar circular intersections (i.e. rotaries and traffic circles). This confusion may lead to opposition in considering a roundabout as a viable alternative for inter- section-related projects. There are safety, operational, environmental, and economic benefits associated with roundabouts. Hence, it is important that the differences between roundabouts and other circular intersection forms be communicated accurately.