1. Introduction CE331 Transportation Engineering Fall 2013 Dr. Reg Souleyrette

2. Transportation Systems Highway Auto, truck, bus, bicycle Rail Air Water Continuous flow system Pipeline, belt

3. Issues and Challenges Traffic congestion Why?Demand > supply Usual response: more capacity Limitations: funding, environmental impact Alternatives: ITS initiatives: ATIS Traffic control: signal coordination, ramp metering Planning: land use, congestion pricing

4. Issues and Challenges (cont’d) Traffic safety Accidents (Crashes) are of concern for all modes of transportation Most visible in commercial air transportation or rail with mass casualties Auto crash fatalities are decreasing Commercial aviation fatalities are relatively low and quite variable

5. Issues and Challenges (continued) Equality of access With auto being the dominant travel mode: Low income people, elderly, and handicapped may be underserved

7. Issues and Challenges (cont’d) Environmental impact System level impact: Air quality energy and land consumption Site specific impact: Noise Water quality Displacement of residents and business

8. Issues and Challenges (cont’d) New technology How to incorporate? Electric cars, natural gas, fuel cell Intelligent transportation system (ITS) Improve safety Reduce congestion Improve mobility and accessibility Improve economic productivity

9. What do transportation engineers do?

10. Course Outline Intersection and signals Unsignalized intersection Signal timing design Geometric design Sight distance Horizontal and vertical alignment

11. Course Outline (cont’d) Operations analysis Traffic flow fundamentals Traffic studies Capacity analysis Transportation planning Four-step procedure for demand forecasting Other modes

12. Characteristics of Driver, Vehicle, and Road

13. Characteristics of Driver Drivers’ skills and perceptual abilities vary with person, physical condition Perception-Reaction Process Four sub-processes: Perception (mostly visual) Identification (understand the stimulus) Emotion (decide what action to take in response) Reaction (executing the action)

14. Characteristics of Driver (cont’d) Perception-Reaction Process (cont’d) Total time for the process is called perception-reaction (P-R) time P-R time varies from 0.5 to 7.0 sec AASHTO recommendation: P-R time = 2.5 sec ** this covers 90% of drivers under most highway conditions Very important when determining stopping sight distance

15. Characteristics of Vehicle Physical dimensions Length – parking space length Width – lane width Height – vertical clearance Weight – structural design of surface, guideway, and bridge Acceleration/deceleration characteristics – maximum grade

16. Characteristics of Road Min. radius of horizontal curve Max. rate of superelevation Max. grade Min. grade and cross-slope Min. length of vertical curve Other