Transportation as a System

I. FIELD OF TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING

Transportation Engineering

▪ Defined by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (1987) as the application of technological and
scientific principles to the planning, functional design, operation, and management of facilities for
any mode of transportation to provide for the safe, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, and
environmentally compatible movement of people and goods

Because of the multidisciplinary content of transportation engineering, concepts are drawn from
the fields of economics, geography, operations research, regional planning, sociology, psychology,
probability, and statistics, together with the customary analytical tools of engineering, are all used
in training transportation engineers and planners.
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Transportation System
▪ Defined as a set of elements and the interactions
between them that produce both the demand for
travel within a given area and the provision of
transportation services (transport supply) to satisfy
this demand (Cascetta, 2009)
Three essential components (Jotin & Lall, 2016):
1. Persons and/or goods that need to be transported
2. Vehicles or vessels used to move people and/or
goods
3. Infrastructure which are fixed installations such as
roads and streets, railroads, pipelines, canals, airports,
and harbors.
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM

Transport system
▪ consists of persons and goods needing a
kind of vehicle or vessel (besides using their
own personal power) to move them from
one position to another
▪ each movement is a transport service
▪ the demand (or need) for services is
matched by an equivalent supply of services
by vehicles and their operators on roads,
tracks, and paths. Consequently, vehicles are
looked on as means of transport
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND ACTIVITY
SYSTEM

Activity system
▪ movements of persons and goods between two or more
points or positions in space relative to the infrastructure
▪ market for movement
▪ size of a market is measured in terms of trade and travel
at the macro level, and the size, the type, and the
frequency of shipments are important factors at the micro
level
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND ACTIVITY
SYSTEM

Traffic system
▪ actual physical movement of transport is realized in
space and time, if people and goods move together
with the means of transport (i.e., vehicles) along
physical networks
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Activity system
▪ represents the set of individual, social, and economic behaviors and
interactions that give rise to travel demand
▪ can be further broken down into three subsystems consisting of:

✓ Households living in each zone, categorized by factors such

as income level, life-cycle, composition, etc.

✓ Economic activities located in each zone, categorized by a

variety of socioeconomic indicators (e.g., sector of activity;
value added; number of employees)

✓ Real estate system, characterized by the floor space

available in each zone for various uses (industrial production,
offices, building areas, etc.) and the associated market prices
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Transport system
▪ consist not only of the physical and
organizational elements that interact with
each other to produce transportation
opportunities, but also of the demand that
takes advantage of such opportunities to
travel from one place to another.
▪ travel demand, in turn, is the result of
interactions among the various economic
and social activities located in a given area.
▪ Consists of 2 main components:
1. Travel Demand
2. Transportation Supply
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND ACTIVITY
SYSTEM
Travel Demand
▪ derives from the need to access urban functions and
services in different places and is determined by the
distribution of households and activities in the area
▪ households - long-term “mobility choices” (holding a
driving license, owning a car, etc.) and short-term
“travel choices” (trip frequency, time, destination,
mode, path,1 etc.), and use the transportation
network and services so that they can undertake
different activities (work, study, shopping, etc.) in
different locations.
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Travel Demand
▪ choices result in travel demand flows, that
is, the trips made by people between the
different zones of the city, for different
purposes, in different periods of the day, by
means of the different available
transportation modes.
▪ Freight travel demand and flows - economic
activities require the transportation of goods
that are consumed by other activities or by
households. Goods are moved between
production plants, retail locations, and
houses or other “final consumption” sites.
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM

Travel Demand
Mobility & Travel Choices < Available Modes (private
car, transit, walking) < Levels of Service (characteristics
or performance attributes - travel times, monetary
costs, service reliability, riding comfort)
Examples:
▪ choice of destination < travel time and cost needed
to reach each alternative destination
▪ choice of departure time < travel time to the
destination and the desired arrival time
▪ choice of transportation mode < influenced by the
time, cost and reliability of the available modes
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM

Transportation Supply
▪ made up of the facilities (roads, parking
spaces, railway lines, etc.), services (transit
lines and timetables), regulations (road
circulation and parking regulations), and
prices (transit fares, parking prices, road tolls,
etc.) that produce travel opportunities.
▪ Transportation facilities generally have a
finite capacity, that is, a maximum number of
units that may use them in each time
interval.
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Transportation Supply
▪ Transportation facilities also generally exhibit
congestion; the number of their users in a time
unit affects their performance.
▪ Congestion on a facility can significantly affect
the level of service received (and perceived) by
its users (e.g. travel time, service delay, and fuel
consumption all increase with the level of
congestion)
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Accessibility
▪ Performance of the transportation system influences the
relative accessibility of different zones of the urban area by
determining, for each zone, the generalized cost (disutility) of
reaching other zones (active accessibility), or of being reached
from other zones (passive accessibility).
▪ These types of accessibilities influence the location of
households and economic activities and ultimately the real
estate market
Examples:
▪ Household choosing their residence zone < active
accessibility to the workplace and other services (commerce,
education, etc.)
▪ Economic activities < passive accessibility on behalf of their
potential clients; public services should be located to allow for
passive accessibility by their users, and so on
II. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND ACTIVITY
SYSTEM
Why transportation is a complex system?
▪ made up of multiple elements with nonlinear
interactions and multiple feedback cycles
▪ inherent unpredictability of many features of the
system e.g random variables = time needed to
traverse a road section, user choice = represented
by expected values
II.
TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM AND
ACTIVITY SYSTEM
Traditionally…
▪ transportation systems engineering focuses on
modeling and analysis of the elements and
relationships that make up the transportation
system, considering the activity system as
exogenously given
▪ Typically, influence of the activity system on the
transportation system (on travel demand),
whereas the inverse influence of accessibility on
activity location and level has usually been
neglected
Nowadays…
▪ transportation system analysis increasingly
studies the whole activity–transportation system,
though at different levels of detail than do
disciplines such as regional science and spatial
economics
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION

▪ Definition of the elements and

relationships that make up the system
to be analyzed
1. Spatial Dimensions
2. Temporal Dimensions
3. Components of Travel Demand
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
SPATIAL DIMENSIONS
Study Area
▪ delineates the geographical area that
includes the transportation system under
analysis
▪ most trips of interest should have their
origin and destination inside the study area
▪ Area boundary: limit of the study area
▪ For instance, the study area might be a
whole country if the transportation project is
at a national level; alternatively, it may be a
specific urban area, or part of an urban area
for a traffic management project
III. TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
SPATIAL DIMENSIONS
Zoning
▪ To model the system, it is necessary to subdivide the study area
(and possibly portions of the external area) into a number of
discrete geographic units called traffic analysis zones (TAZs)
▪ Interzonal trips : trips between two different traffic zones
▪ Intrazonal trips : trips are those that start and end within the
same zone
▪ Zone centroid : fictitious node that represents the terminal
points where trips start or end w/in a zone
▪ External area is usually subdivided into larger traffic zones.
External zones represent trips that use the study area’s
transportation system but start or end outside of the study area
itself
▪ External zones are also represented by zone centroids sometimes
called stations
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
SPATIAL DIMENSIONS
Zoning
General guidelines on zoning:
▪ Physical geographic separators (e.g., rivers, railway lines,
etc.) as zone boundaries
▪ Administrative areas (e.g., census geographic units,
municipalities, or provinces) allow association with statistical
data ((population, employment)
▪ Different levels of zoning detail may be adopted for different
parts of the study area depending on the precision needed
▪ Land use and accessibility to transportation facilities and
services (e.g. residential, commercial, etc.)
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION
SPATIAL DIMENSIONS
Basic Network
▪ set of physical elements represented for a given
application
▪ single-mode system or multimodal system
▪ Links: the roadways or tracks connecting two or more
points. (e.g. pipes, beltways, sea lanes, and airway)
▪ Terminals: the nodes where travel and shipment begins or
ends. (e.g. parking garages, off-street parking lots, loading
docks, bus stops. airports, and bus terminals)
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION
TEMPORAL DIMENSIONS
▪ Transportation system operates and evolves over time, with the
characteristics of both travel demand and supply varying at different time
scales
▪ Analysis period is the entire time duration relevant to the study of a given
system
▪ Design (e.g. no. of lanes, traffic signal settings, transit line service frequency)
usually requires information on short maximum-load periods such as the peak
hour
▪ Economic or financial evaluations usually require information about a
project’s performance over a time span comparable to its technical life
▪ Kinds of time variations of system characteristics
1. Long-term variations or trends
2. Cyclical (seasonal) variations
3. Between-period variations
III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
COMPONENTS OF TRAVEL DEMAND
▪ Travel demand is a derived demand, the result of the interactions
between the activity system and the transportation services and facilities
Trip
▪ act of moving from one place (origin) to another (destination) using one
or more modes of transportation, to carry out one or more activities
Journey or trip chain
▪ sequence of trips, following each other in such a way that the
destination of one trip coincides with the origin of the next
▪ Passenger travels usually start and end at home. home–work–shopping-
home chain
▪ Shipments or consignments - individual movements of goods from one
place to another for freight
▪ Logistic or supply chain - sequence of manipulations (e.g., packaging)
and storage activities applied
 III. TRANSPORTATION
SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
COMPONENTS OF TRAVEL DEMAND
Spatial Characterization of Trips
▪ made by grouping trips by place (zone or centroid) of origin and
destination, and demand flows can be arranged in tables, called origin-
destination matrices (O-D matrices), whose rows and columns
correspond to the different origin and destination zones
▪ Trips can be characterized by whether their endpoints are located
within or outside of the study area
▪ Travel demand can also be classified in terms of user and trip
characteristics
Person trips
▪ user characteristics of interest usually relate to the trip makers
socioeconomic attributes, such as income level or possession of a
driver’s license
Trip Purpose
▪ Person trips are often described in terms of the general activities
carried out at the origin and destination ends (e.g. home-based work
trips, work-based shopping trips)
III. TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
IDENTIFICATION
IV. LAND-USE AND
TRANSPORTATION

Land use produces a certain number of trips > Trips indicate the need
for transportation facilities to serve the trip-making demand > New
or improved transportation facilities > Better accessibility > Demand
to develop land increases > Land value increases
▪ Eventually, the original land use changes (usually to a higher
density), reflecting the state of the land market; and so, the cycle
continues.
Land-use
▪ Origin of term comes from agricultural economics and refers to a
parcel of land and the economic use it was then put to grazing,
growing crops, mining, or building
Land-use Planning
▪ First, it includes all forms of planning. transportation planning can
be considered as a form of land-use planning because it actually
consists of planning for that proportion of land used for
transportation.
▪ Second, land-use planning is a discipline by itself, having its own set
of theories and practices.
IV. LAND-USE AND
TRANSPORTATION

Urban System Component

▪ The nucleus of the city may be
considered as the location of the initial
settlement, developing in course of time,
as the commercial and communications
center of the city—usually the central
business district (CBD). As the city grows
and spreads out, the influence of the CBD
may tend to decline as prominent
subcenters begin to develop.
IV. LAND-USE AND TRANSPORTATION
IV. LAND-USE AND TRANSPORTATION
 IV. LAND-USE AND
TRANSPORTATION

Land-use and Transportation

▪ there is a direct interaction between the type and intensity of land
use and the supply of transportation facilities provided
Relationships context between transportation and land
development:
1. Physical relationships at the macroscale, which are of long-term
significance and generally considered as part of the planning process
2. Physical relationships at the microscale, which are both of short-
and long-term significance and generally considered as urban design
issues (often at the scale of sites or facilities)
3. Process relationships, which deal with the legal, administrative,
financial, and institutional aspects of coordinating land and
transportation development
IV. LAND-USE AND
TRANSPORTATION

Land-use potential
▪ measure of the scale of socioeconomic
activity that takes place on a given area of
land
▪ land use has the ability or potential to
“generate” traffic.
IV. LAND-USE AND
TRANSPORTATION
Trip generation
▪ First step in travel demand
forecasting
▪ provides the linkage between
land use and travel
▪ Land use for trip-generation
purposes is usually described in
terms of land-use intensity,
character of the land-use
activities, and the location within
the urban environment
IV. LAND-USE AND
TRANSPORTATION
Urban Growth or Decline
▪ transportation in terms of
economic development is a
derived demand and is
therefore dependent on the
development of other sectors
of the economy
IV. LAND-USE AND TRANSPORTATION