Introduction to Transportation Engineering

The second edition of Introduction to Transportation Engineering has been developed to provide a concise yet thorough introduction to intermodal transportation. One of its underlying concepts is that the basic techniques and principles of transportation engineering are of wide application. For practical reasons, the major emphasis is often on highways, but care is taken to show how basic concepts and techniques apply to different modes.

The book strives to provide a background in transportation planning, analysis, and design while emphasizing the social, economic, and political context of transportation engineering. It places major emphasis on important practical topics such as geometric design, Highway Capacity Manual methods, and traffic signal timing, and also emphasizes important theoretical topics such as the fundamental techniques of traffic analysis and the economic theory underlying transportation demand modeling.

The text has been revised and updated to reflect the 2000 revision of the Highway Capacity Manual. The numbers of flow charts, diagrams, and photos have been increased from the previous edition. The text also offers new open-ended design exercises pertaining to common design problems in transportation such as horizontal and vertical alignment of roads, railways, or runways; traffic design for highways; planning and design of traffic control; and design of bus routes and schedules. These exercises respond to ABET-2000 accreditation requirements, particularly to civil engineering program criteria that require “design experiences integrated throughout the professional component of the curriculum.”