What is transport engineering?

Transport engineers plan, design and operate the large public and private infrastructure systems that connect our physical world.

We need a broad range of continually evolving, large-scale transport infrastructure, including road, rail, air and water. Transport engineers quantify and optimise our mobility infrastructure networks to meet travel and freight demands, while ensuring safety, equity and sustainability, at minimal levels of congestion and cost.

Transport engineering has always been one of the essential civil engineering disciplines, impacting roadways, bridges, transit stations, airports and sea ports etc. Transport engineering has now developed into a multidisciplinary field spanning economics, politics, sociology and psychology, in addition to its core mathematical, engineering and computational principles.

Transport planning involves developing mathematical techniques for:

forecasting travel demand and planning to accommodate growth in demand

determining improvements to the transport infrastructure

reducing emissions

reducing energy use.

Computational transport planning uses mathematical methods to predict, represent and quantify:

the evolution of land use in cities

travel attributes such as trip purpose

travel decisions, including mode choice.

Planning models then examine the feasibility of projects and policies through cost-benefit and scenario analysis.

Transport engineers face multi-faceted design decisions when they are designing optimised transport infrastructure networks. These might relate to:

the physical expansion of transport facilities, such as lane width or the number of lanes, for a roadway

the materials and thickness used in pavements

the geometry of a facility, such as a roadway, rail line or airport

road pricing schemes

deploying information-based technology.

In all design decisions, multiple performance measures, cost metrics and safety criteria must be considered and weighed.

Transport operations, whether for road, rail, port or air traffic, are designed to minimise travel delays, improve safety, reduce emissions and enhance reliability, as well as taking other considerations into account.

Transport operation decisions involve:

optimising traffic signals

setting specific tolls

designing traffic signs and markings.

With the development of new Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), transport engineers use tools including advanced traveller information systems (such as variable message signs), advanced traffic control systems (such as ramp meters) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications to optimise the performance of the transport system.

 

Transportation Engineer

There are dozens of fields that fall into the category of transportation, including all facets of trains, buses, ships, airplanes, subways, or cars. A Transportation Engineer researches, designs, implements, and maintains the roads, ports, airports, and bus systems that the rest of us rely on. The first step with each project for a Transportation Engineer is to predict the amount of use it will receive. If you are designing a new high-speed commuter train, for example, you need...

Transportation engineering or transport engineering is the application of technology and scientific principles to the planning, functional design, operation and management of facilities for any mode of transportation in order to provide for the safe, efficient, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, and environmentally compatible movement of people and goods (transport). It is a sub-discipline of civil engineering [1] and of industrial engineering. Transportation engineering is a major component of the civil engineering and mechanical engineering disciplines, according to specialisation of academic courses and main competences of the involved territory. The importance of transportation engineering within the civil and industrial engineering profession can be judged by the number of divisions in ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) that are directly related to transportation. There are six such divisions (Aerospace; Air Transportation; Highway; Pipeline; Waterway, Port, Coastal and Ocean; and Urban Transportation) representing one-third of the total 18 technical divisions within the ASCE (1987).

The planning aspects of transportation engineering relate to urban planning, and involve technical forecasting decisions and political factors. Technical forecasting of passenger travel usually involves an urban transportation planning model, requiring the estimation of trip generation (how many trips for what purpose), trip distribution (destination choice, where is the traveler going), mode choice (what mode is being taken), and route assignment (which streets or routes are being used). More sophisticated forecasting can include other aspects of traveler decisions, including auto ownership, trip chaining (the decision to link individual trips together in a tour) and the choice of residential or business location (known as land use forecasting). Passenger trips are the focus of transportation engineering because they often represent the peak of demand on any transportation system.

A review of descriptions of the scope of various committees indicates that while facility planning and design continue to be the core of the transportation engineering field, such areas as operations planning, logistics, network analysis, financing, and policy analysis are also important to civil engineers, particularly to those working in highway and urban transportation. The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) list online the safety protocols, geometric design requirements, and signal timing.

Transportation engineering, as practiced by civil engineers, primarily involves planning, design, construction, maintenance, and operation of transportation facilities. The facilities support air, highway, railroad, pipeline, water, and even space transportation. The design aspects of transportation engineering include the sizing of transportation facilities (how many lanes or how much capacity the facility has), determining the materials and thickness used in pavement designing the geometry (vertical and horizontal alignment) of the roadway (or track).

Before any planning occurs the Engineer must take what is known as an inventory of the area or if it is appropriate, the previous system in place. This inventory or database must include information on population, land use, economic activity, transportation facilities and services, travel patterns and volumes, laws and ordinances, regional financial resources, community values and expectations. These inventories help the engineer create business models to complete accurate forecasts of the future conditions of the system review.

Operations and management involve traffic engineering, so that vehicles move smoothly on the road or track. Older techniques include signs, signals, markings, and tolling. Newer technologies involve intelligent transportation systems, including advanced traveler information systems (such as variable message signs), advanced traffic control systems (such as ramp meters), and vehicle infrastructure integration. Human factors are an aspect of transportation engineering, particularly concerning driver-vehicle interface and user interface of road signs, signals, and markings.

 

Texts for civil engineers

 

Civil engineering is one of the oldest professions. As far back as the Great Pyramids at Giza, brilliant engineering minds have been thinking up ways to design and build mind-blowing structures. Today, the only thing that has changed is what they create. With new, lighter and stronger materials to work with, and greater challenges to be met, there is no limit to what civil engineers can achieve. They build towers, bridges, roads, railways and tunnels; airports and mines; dams, ports and harbours; water supplies and sewerage schemes; and irrigation systems and flood mitigation works. In fact, any infrastructure that’s required to run our modern society needs the input of civil engineers along the way. The profession is very broad, with opportunities for a specialised career, including:

construction engineers and managers

geotechnical engineers

structural engineers

transport engineers

water engineers

civil engineers with architecture

Construction engineers and managers, engineering managers, project managers and asset managers are responsible for essentially all decision making regarding expenditure related to infrastructure.

The work is extremely motivating and rewarding as construction engineers see infrastructure unfolding from nothing to become completed assets, such as bridges and buildings, which will serve society for many years.

Construction projects can be extremely large, as in the oil and gas industries; medium, as in building bridges; or small, as in small commercial office and residential construction. Construction engineers can work in large teams or medium-sized teams in the public or private sector, or be sole practitioners. They are able to choose the type of work that suits their interests, often moving on to senior business roles in construction companies.

Construction engineering and management skills are internationally recognised.