WEEK 1 INTRODUCTION

Course Objective  Students will be introduced to the concepts and the process of urban transportation planning in metropolitan areas, and will exercise the travel demand forecasting by solving numerical examples.  They will gain an experience of developing a travel demand model for a small artificial town (UTOWN).

Course Content  This course includes analysis of urban transportation with respect to system performance and efficiency transportation planning in metropolitan areas.  The course topics include the history of urban transportation, environmental and planning regulations, air quality, modal characteristics, land use and transportation interaction and emerging information technologies for transportation planning

Course Learning Outcomes 1. Students will gain the concepts and the process of urban transportation planning in metropolitan areas. 2. Students will learn the steps of the 4-step travel demand forecasting by solving numerical examples. 3. Gaining the ability to access to academic knowledge and the ability to study independently. 4. Gaining the ability to present ideas and findings in a research area verbally and in a written format. 5. Presenting the responsibility of professional and ethical behaviors. 6. Gaining the awareness of continuing learning via the modern technology.

Course Semester Program WeekSubjects Feb Course introduction and distribution of syllabus Feb The Transport Planning Process: Key issues (1) Feb The Transport Planning Process: Key issues (2) 4 6.Marc Challenges Facing the Urban Environment & Urban Transport 5 13.Marc Sustainable Urban Transport Plans (1) 6 20.Marc Midterm exam (written) 7 27.Marc Success and failures in urban transport planning in Europe (1) 8 3.Apr Success and failures in urban transport planning in Europe (2)

Course Semester Program WeekSubjects 9 10.Apr Analysis of System Performance and Efficiency in Urban Transportation Apr Travel Demand Forecasting (TDF) for Urban Transportation planning TDF Step 1: Trip Generation modeling a GIS environment Apr Midterm Exam (Student Presentations) 12 TDF Step 2: Trip Distribution modeling a GIS environment 13 TDF Step 3: Mode Choice modeling a GIS environment 14 TDF Step 4: Traffic Assignment modeling a GIS environment May Review for the semester-end and student presentations 16 Final Exam

Grading  Mid-term written exam  Presentation  Homeworks  Final exam

Instructor Assoc. Prof. Darçın AKIN

Introduction  The major trend characterizing urban transportation in the 20th century is the increasing preference for and use of private cars instead of public transport, walking, and cycling.  Cars have provided people with unprecedented levels of mobility. However, the negative impact of transportation activities on the environment and people has also increased dramatically.  The transportation sector has been the fastest growing energy-consuming sector during the past two decades, and it is a major contributor to global warming and climate change.  Transport is one of the most significant sources of unsustainability in urban areas. These issues are stimulating urban planners and decision makers to incorporate the concept of sustainability into their policy design at various levels.

Introduction  Sustainability has become an important topic both in society and in politics. However, despite its successful implementation in several sectors and its wide recognition in academic and professional debate, sustainability is still not that evident in day-to-day regional planning practice.  At the regional level—precisely the level at which strategic decisions are increasingly made and the greatest impacts are to be expected—the gap between the worlds of land use and transportation planning seems to be the largest.  Persisting institutional barriers cause much of this gap. Land use and transport decision making typically are the responsibility of different agencies, encompass different spatial scales, follow different procedures, and involve different sets of stakeholders.  However, even when these institutional conditions are more favourable, differences in the disciplinary background and language of land use and transportation policy makers are an obstacle to policy integration.

Introduction  Extensive academic literature on accessibility measures suggests that there are many ways in which to define, represent, and quantify accessibility, and that these have widely enriched the theoretical understanding of accessibility by taking more and more social, economic, spatial, temporal, and behavioral components into account.  Different measures have shown potential for the accessibility concept. First, accessibility is able to link physical space and functional activities. For example, a locational accessibility perspective assesses the attractiveness of places within the urban system relative to one another. In contrast, an individual accessibility perspective focuses on the geographic scope of activities available to a given person.  Second, accessibility can be linked with various transport and land use policies on different scales: neighborhood, intraurban, and regional levels.  However, any interpretable measure integrating accessibility and sustainability and, in particular, linking with policy-making practice is relatively scarce.

The Analysis of Urban Transportation System Effect: Evaluating the Difference between Mobility and Accessibility in Orientation  The difference and relation between mobility and accessibility and their urban transportation system effect need to be studied.  The evaluation points out that both mobility and accessibility can improve the system efficiency in transportation planning, but the accessibility orientation can provide better sustainability.  With industrialization and urbanization, cites in the world have experienced unceasing development. Travel demand in cites is increasing and complicated. These demands place higher requirements on urban transportation systems.  For a long time, the core idea of urban transportation system planning can be summarized: How to increase supply constantly and to use technical progress and system optimization to meet the travel demand.

The Analysis of Urban Transportation System Effect: Evaluating the Difference between Mobility and Accessibility in Orientation  To achieve this specific performance, urban transportation planning concepts and methods are used widely to improve urban mobility.  Mobility refers primarily to improved spatial activities. The "four-step" planning method is a typical representative of this concept, but this planning method meets a series of problems. The urban transportation system is complex and the extent of travel increase is uncertain.  The performance and efficiency of transportation supply resource operations are declining continuously (road resource is the most serious).  Travel cost and time have been increasing and the urban environment is getting worse.

4-Step Travel Demand modeling  Inputs:  Land-use data  Population  Employment  Education  Economics, etc.  Zonal characteristics  Land-use data  Zone-to-zone travel times, costs, etc.  Network characteristics  Link lenghts  # of lanes  Parking conditions  Link charcteristicds  Observed volumes/speeds  Free-flow speeds  etc.