Transportation Planning

(BTL2034)

By: Dr. Seyed Mohammadreza Ghadiri , April 2021

 Transport in Malaysia

❑ Transportation in Malaysia started to develop during British colonial

rule, and the country's transport network is now diverse and developed.
Malaysia's road network is extensive, covering 144,403 kilometres,
including 1,821 km of expressways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Transport_in_Malaysia
 Highway Classification

Highways are classified based upon two primary functions; Mobility,

Accessibility.

❑ There are three main functional

classes as defined by the United
States Federal Highway
Administration: arterial, collector,
and local.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_roads
 Transportation Authorities in Malaysia

❑ The Ministry of Transport (MOT), is responsible for transport: road

transport, civil aviation, marine, road safety, port authority, railway
assets, maritime, air accident investigation, logistic, maritime safety,
shipping, rail transport, airport, airline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min
istry_of_Transport_(Malaysia)

http://www.mot.gov.my/enmot.g
ov.my/en
Transportation Statistics in Malaysia

http://www.mot.gov.my/en/resources/yearly-statistic
 Transportation Problem!

Question: What is the result of the higher travel intensity in terms of

vehicle kilometres, what do we experience practically in the field?
❑ This is resulting traffic and transportation problems e.g. congestion.
Problems of increase travel intensity are as follows:

Problem Solution Conventional Approach Operational Approach with ITS

• Advanced Traffic Control

• Incident Management
• Corridor Management
• New Roads
• Advanced Vehicle Systems
• Increase Roadway • New Lanes
• Real-Time Ride Matching
Throughput • High Occupancy Vehicle
Traffic • Integrating Transit and
• Increase Passenger (HOV) lanes
Congestion Feeder Services
Throughput • Carpooling
• Flexible Route Transit
• Reduce Demand • Fixed Route Transit
• New Personalized Public
• Flexible time Programs
Transit
• Telecommuting
Transportation Pricing
Transportation Problem!
Transportation Problem!
 Transportation Problem!

Question: Can our transportation planning be in such a way that to

curb mobility?
❑ You may wonder whether it is possible to reduce demand? But it
is not desirable to reduce demand. We must encourage mobility in
general, because mobility is a key for growth of socio economic
activities. Our transportation planning process should not interpret
curbing mobility, here what is meant is to spread out the demand
over time as well as space by some appropriate means.
 Transportation Problem!

Question: What is Personalizing Public Transit?

❑ Personalizing public transit is like call a bus concept. People can
record their demand for transport and an operator can send a
minibus to pick passengers based on the timing requirement as
well as the destination requirement. That is what is meant here as
new personalized public transit.
 Transportation Problem!

Question: How do we reduce congestion by transport pricing?

❑ We can impose toll in highly congested areas, every vehicle has to

pay a toll. In such a case, it will be a deterrent for the vehicle
users resulting in reduced usage of those areas which are highly
congested.
 Transportation Problem!

Apart from traffic congestion we have other problems which are quite
common to any urban areas. For example, lack of mobility and accessibility
we may have a system, but it may be difficult to access the different modes of
transportation restraining the mobility of urban dwellers.

Problem Solution Conventional Approach Operational Approach with ITS

• Expand Fixed Route • Multimodal Pre-trip and en-

Transit and Para-Transit route Traveller information
• Provide User
Service (Para-transit Services.
Lack of Friendly Access
provides access to the main • Real-time Response to
Mobility and to Quality
transit service) Changing Demand
Accessibility Transportation
• Personalized Public
Service
• Radio and TV Traffic Transportation Services
Reports • Enhanced Fare Card
 Transportation Problem!

Another common problem that you face in urban travel is disconnected

transportation modes. We have different modes of transport available in
some cities, but they operate isolation may be, because of the operational
policies of different operators.

Problem Solution Conventional Approach Operational Approach with ITS

• Regional transportation
• Improve inter-
management system.
modality or
Disconnected • Regional transportation
improve • Construct intermodal
Transportation information clearinghouse.
connectivity connections
Mode • Disseminate multimodal
between the
information pre-trip and en-
existing modes
route
 Transportation Problem!

Finally, the most severe and important problem faced in urban contracts is
crashes, injuries and fatalities.

Problem Solution Conventional Approach Operational Approach with ITS

• Improve roadway
• Partially and fully automated
geometry and sight
vehicle control systems
distance
• Vehicle condition monitoring
• Grade-separate crossings
• Driver condition monitoring
or construct flyovers at
• Advanced grade-crossing
Crashes, major intersections
systems
Injuries and • Improve Safety • Driver training
• Automated detection of
Fatalities • Install traffic signals
adverse weather and road
• Reduce speed limits (if
conditions, vehicle warning,
require)
and road view notification
• Post warnings in problem
• Automated emergency
areas
notification
 Transportation Problem!

As a remedial measures, we discussed about construction of new roads,

addition of new traffic lanes, construction of inter model facilities and
improving roadway geometry construction of fly over and So on.

Now, the question is:

❑ How do we go about constructing these infrastructural facilities?

❑ Which are highly capital intensive?
❑ How do you know that a new road that you are going to construct is
going to meet the demand for the next 1 year, 2 years, 5 years or 10
years?
 Transportation Problem!

As an instance, When you invest lots of money to construct a fly over, you
must realize that it should serve at least for a minimum period of 50 years.
That means, you need to take into account, the traffic growth, transportation
demand that will influence the traffic at that particular intersection for a 50-
year period of time.
 Transportation Problem!

We cannot just observe today’s problems in urban areas and immediately get
into the process of providing solution without understanding comprehensively
the whole of the travel pattern and the possible feature growth. There is no
point in providing solution.

Question: In your opinion, what are three important points, which can
provide some mitigation to the transportation problem experience in any
cities?

1. Planning
2. Comprehensive Planning
3. Continuous Planning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HnLhmXSpUs
 What is Planning?

❑ The process of working out, beforehand, a scheme, program,

or method for the accomplishment of an objective.
 What is Planning?

Based on this definition, there is an objective directing your planning process.

❑ For example, a household is planning to make a weekend shopping trip,

the objective is to buy their requirement for a week or month is the
objective of household. Immediately the next step before making the trip
could be to understand the requirement then, quantify the requirement.
Identify the available locations of these quantified requirements (e.g.
grocery, vegetables or textile items or jewelry items and So on).
 What is Planning?

❑ Then, they quantify and find out the transportation requirement. Should
they go by transit or use their own vehicle and so on? And then they plan
the sequence of mobility, where to go first then, where to go next and so
on and finally, deciding about the timing, time of start and time of finish.
 Transportation Planning!

So …
What a transportation system planner is doing or will do is the same process
for the city as a whole city comprises of households. Thus, one should
understand the activity pattern of household, their desire, their travel pattern.
Aggregating the whole process you will automatically end up with
understanding of the travel pattern in an urban area.
 Transportation Planning!

Question: What is Transportation Planning?

Transportation planning is the process of:

❑ Understanding the factors influencing the demand for travel,

❑ Development of relationships between the factors and the travel
demand, and
❑ Use of the relationships to predict the future demand for travel and the
resulting transport infrastructure needs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_planning
 Transport Planning

Transport Planning is a Multi-disciplinary field.

Economic appraisal
To evaluate and assess
scenarios

Discrete choice theory Traffic flow theory

Transport
To model travelers' Planning To simulate traffic
behavior

Computer Science
To solve large scale
network problems
 Important of Transportation Planning

❑ Efficiency
o To achieve efficient management and better management of existing
resources
▪ Effective use of transportation system
▪ Uses of technology
▪ Land use and resource controlling

❑ Quality
o To reduce a negative impact to the traffic that produce a pollution

❑ Equity
o To meet travel demand and response for all communities
 Transportation Planning Period

❑ Short Term (Action Plan)

o Review matters that can be completed within three (3) years and
involve high costs.

▪ Example: A program to optimize the use of existing transportation

systems by installing various traffic control devices such as signs
and signals.
 Transportation Planning Period

❑ Long Term ( ≥ 5 years)

o This type of planning is more structured and complicated, and it must
be designed better than short term planning

▪ Note: urban transportation planning process involves planning the

next 20 to 25 year
 Planning Process

❑ The primary aim of transport planning is the identification and evaluation of

the future transport needs.

▪ The four main stages of the

transportation planning process
are:

https://www.geographynotes.com/arti
cles/4-main-stages-of-the-
transportation-planning-process-
explained/219
 Strategic Planning!

❑ What is Strategy?
o Strategy generally involves setting an objective, the actions required
to meet the objective, mapped against the necessary resources
needed to execute the objective.

❑ What is Strategic (long term) Planning?

o Strategic planning is the process of defining the goals of your
organization for the future and the strategies by which these goals
will be achieved and resourced.
o It starts by asking oneself simple questions like : What are we doing,
should we continue to do it or change our product line or the way of
working, what is the impact of social, political, technological and
other environmental factors on our operations, are we prepared to
accept these changes etc.
Strategic Planning Cycle!
 Quiz!

Question: What is Strategic Transportation Planning?

 Strategic Transportation Planning

❑ Strategic (long term) transport planning models is used for infrastructure

decisions:
▪ Forecasting effects of building a new road or extending current roads
▪ Forecasting effects of new public transport services

❑ Used for demand and mobility management:

▪ Forecasting effects of introducing road pricing
▪ Forecasting effects of parking regimes

❑ Used for traffic management:

▪ Forecasting effects of ramp metering
▪ Forecasting Effects of route guidance
 Economic Appraisal

❑ Cost-benefit analysis
❑ Environmental impact assessment

o Projects are evaluated based on costs and benefits, e.g.

▪ Construction costs
▪ Maintenance costs
▪ Toll revenues
▪ Travel times
▪ Travel time reliability
▪ Health impacts (noise, emissions of NOx and PM10)
▪ Climate impacts (emissions of CO2)
▪ Employment impacts
▪ Safety impacts
▪ Agglomeration impacts
❖ The term agglomeration is an economic term used to refer to the phenomenon of firms being located
close to one another.
 Quiz!

❑ Why good forecasting models are important?

 A Case Study

❑ The Cross City Tunnel was brilliant in theory and an utter failure in
practice.

Sydney Cross City Tunnel (completed 2005, costs: $680mln)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_City_Tunnel
 A Case Study

▪ Today its usage has increased to around 45,000 cars per day, but that is still half
the expected use.
 Transportation Planning Tools!

❑ There are a lot of software for strategic transport planning

purposes, such as:

▪ TransCAD (USA)
▪ OmniTRANS (The Netherlands)
▪ VISUM (Germany)
▪ CUBE Voyager (USA)
▪ EMME (Canada)

❑ In addition, microscopic traffic simulation software exists, such as:

▪ VISSIM (Germany)
▪ Paramics (UK)
▪ CUBE Dynasim (USA)
▪ AIMSUN (Spain)
 Recapture!

Question 1: Give examples for the common traffic and transportation

problems experienced in urban areas?

Question 2: Define the term "Planning"?

Question3: Explain the importance of planning in transport

infrastructure development?
 Recapture!

Answer 1: Traffic congestion, lack of mobility and accessibility,

disconnected transportation modes operating in urban areas and the
problem of traffic safety involving crashers, injuries and fatalities.
And the solution to these problems as we realized is planning;
appropriate planning before trying to solve these problems.

Answer 2: Planning is a scheme to accomplish a particular objective,

to put in more precisely; planning is a process of preparing a scheme
or program to accomplish an objective beforehand.
 Recapture!

Answer 3: Any infrastructure developed in transportation system has

to meet the demand for transportation over a long period of time,
may be for about 20 to 30 years. To get the basic input for the design
and construction of these infrastructural facilities, we have to have
some idea about the total traffic that will be making use of such
facilities in future. This information can be obtained only through
comprehensive systematic transportation system planning process.
That is how transport system planning is very important in the
provision of transport infrastructure facilities.