Chapter 1

Introduction
Among the factors that may justify a transportation project are improvements in trafc ow
and safety, energy consumption, travel time, economic growth, and accessibility. Some
transportation projects may have been selected for reasons unrelated to specic benets, for
example, to stimulate employment in a particular region, to compete with other cities or states
for prestige, to attract industry, to respond to pressures from a political constituency, or to
gain personal benet from a particular route location or construction project. Transportation
planning, or transport planning, is involved with the evaluation, assessment, design and
siting of transport facilities The process for planning transportation systems should be a
rational one that serves to furnish unbiased information about the effects that the proposed
transportation project will have on the affected community and on users. The process must be
exible enough to be applicable to any transportation project or system, because the kinds of
problems that transportation engineers work on will vary over time. The transportation
planning process is not intended to furnish a decision or to give a single result that must be
followed, although it can do so in relatively simple situations. Rather, the process is intended
to provide the appropriate information To those who will be affected and those responsible
for deciding whether the transportation project should go forward.

Scope of the subject

Urban-transport planning is a continuous process involving an interaction between
government and the urban community. The appraisal of conditions within the community
leads to a choice among alternative actions within the government and hopefully to the
alleviation of unsatisfactory conditions through the implementation of the chosen action.
Some of the factors which will be taken into consideration are
1. Transportation occupies a high place in modern life. Advancement in all spheres of
life has been to a large extent influenced by transportation. Transport planning is a
science that seeks to study the problems that arise in providing transportation facilities
in an urban, regional or national setting and to prepare a systematic basses for
planning of such facilities. Since the developed countries where this science has
evolved are mainly urban- oriented the emphasis is more on urban transport planning.
However, the principles can be applied to regional or national transport planning as
well with due changed wherever required.
2. Human activities take place in adopted spaces linked by communication through
channels. Town and country planning is a science that deals with the study of urban or
country system covering the interacting activities using adapted spaces linked by
communication channel. Transport planning is an important part of overall town and

country planning, since it deals with the transport network which is an important
channel of communications
3. Though motor vehicles have revolutionised our life and brought comfort, pleasure and
convenience, they have created problem of congestion, lack of safety and degradation
of the environment. The situation has already become unmanageable in many town
and cities. To understand the nature of these problems and formulate proposals for the
safe and efficient movement of goods and people from one place to another is the
subject of transport planning.

Interdependency of land use and traffic

At first sight the purpose and content of transport planning appears obvious. The problems
and difficulties associated within the towns and cities are apparent. Thought these problems
are not new to us but they have taken a more dominating shape due to the growth of urban
population and rapid growth of motor vehicle ownership and usage. The transport planning is
the process of reducing these problems. Until very recently the solutions were completely
traffic functional. That is the common problems like traffic congestion,accidents dealys
were tired to be improved by new construction and also by improving the existing conditions,
for the traffic that is expected to flow in the future.
More recently, however, transport and land-use planners have come to realize the potential of
transport to shape the urban environment by influencing the accessibility of locations within
the urban area. Although progress in this direction has been slow, transport planners are
gradually moving from the position where a consideration of land use is incorporated in the
transport planning process merely as an input control in the preparation of estimates of future
travel needs.
The urban transport planning process is based on a range of assumptions and principles the
most basic of which are that:
1. Travel patterns are tangible, stable and predictable.
2. Movement demands are directly related to the distribution, and intensity of land uses,
which are capable of being accurately determined for some future date.
In addition to these fundamental assumptions, it has been found necessary in the light of
experience to assume that
1. Decisive relationships exist between all modes of transport and that the future role of
a particular mode cannot be determined without giving consideration to all other
modes.

2. The transportation system influences the development of an area, as well as serving

that area.
3. Areas of continuous urbanization require a region-wide consideration of the transport
situation.
4. The transportation study is an integral part of the overall planning process, and cannot
adequately be considered in isolation.
5. The transportation planning process is continuous, and requires constant up-dating,
validating and amendment.
In the year 1954, Mitchell and Rapkin made a statement that urban traffic was a function of
land use. Thought it appears now that there is nothing sparkling about this statement, yet it
paved the way for a new line of thinking in urban transportation and land use planning. Till
then, transport planning was limited to the measurement of traffic using streets, identifying
those sections were the present traffic had exceeded the capacity and understanding
improvement measures to relieve congestion and bottleneck in the crux of the transportation
problem and only supplied the engineers with short- term palliatives to deal with the transport
malady. This approach has now been virtually abandoned
Mitchell and rapkin observed that various kinds of activities based on the land called land use
generated different amounts and kinds of traffic. They concluded that though measures such
as
1. Regulation and control of traffic
2. Provision and improvement of physical channels of movement
Were effective in dealing with urban traffic, the most basic level of action for a long run
solution of traffic problems is the planning, guidance and control in the pattern of land use.
More recently buchanan has also emphasised the inter relationship between traffic and
buildings in a town. He states that in town, traffic takes place because of buildings, and
infact all movements in a town have an origin and destination in a building. The pattern
traced by traffic is thus closely related to the manner in which the building are arranged.
Commuter flows are closely dependent upon the location and size of the work-places and of
home areas. School traffic is governed by location of the school and home areas
Just as transport is a function of land-use, the reciprocal statement that land use is a function
of transportation is also true. As new systems of transport are built, the land- use pattern that
follows has a close relation to the accessibility that has been made possible.
The above interdependence is the key-note of modern transport planning. The early detroid
area transportation study demonstrated the empirical validity of the proposition that transport
was a function of land use. The penn-jersey transportation study tested the reciprocal

proposition that land use was a function of transportation. These concepts have by now been
used in a number of important transportation studies in many of the principal towns and cities
all over the world.

Systems Approach to Transport Planning

The planning morphology described below consists of five principal steps which are labelled:
(1) problem definition, (2) solution generation, (3) solution analysis, (4) evaluation and
choice, and (5) implementation. This morphology is based on certain principles of
systems engineering that have been illustrated in Fig.
in the recent past, a new activity known as operations research has taken shape and is finding
interesting applications in diverse fields. Transport planning is one field where this approach
has already been tried and found extremely useful. Operations research is mainly concerned
with optimising the performance of a system. A system is defined as a set of components that
is organized in such a manner as to direct the action of the system under inputs toward
specific goals and objectives. The role of the systems planner may be understood in a general
way as the direction of his efforts to design a system that achieves maximum integration,
or"degree to fit," between the system and its environment. The problem-solving morphology

described in the following sections provides a framework to guide the planner in his search
for an optimal system.
Decision to adopt
planning
Problem, definition, formulation of
goals
Problems, constrains
Potentials, forecastings
Solution
generation
Solution analysis

Evaluation of possible alternatives

and choice
Implementatio
n
Operation

Performance assessment and

review

The transport planning process starts with the decision to adopt planning as a tool for
achieving certain desired goals and objectives. After the goals and objectives are defined,
solutions are generated, taking due consideration of problems, constraints, potentials and
forecasting. These solutions are evaluated after thorough analysis. The best amongst them is
chosen for implementation. After implementation, the system is studied in operation and its
performance assessed. Based on this assessment it may be necessary to go back to certain
stages of planning and repeat the sequence.