Transportation Planning

Studies
ITE, Transportation Planning Handbook, chapter 5
Transportation Planning Studies

• Typical study approach:

• Establish study goals, scope, and purpose
• Analyze existing conditions (including data collection, summaries, and
analysis)
• Identify existing problems and needs
• Assess future changes and needs
• Develop and analyze options
• Select preferred options and prepare recommended plans
 Transportation
Planning
Process

Image from the ITE’s Transportation Planning

Handbook, pg.97
Transportation Planning Studies

• Goals: often a political/citizen process

• Preserve and protect the environment
• Stimulate economic development
• Coordinate land use and transportation investment
• Improve the quality of service of public transportation
(transit)
• Reduce congestion
• Improve air quality/lower emissions
• Minimize the displacement of people and jobs
• Avoid habitat fragmentation
• Etc.
Transportation Planning Studies

• Inventories: the basic building blocks of the

transportation planning process
• Land use inventories
• Population and economic activities
• Transportation facility usage
• Travel patterns (obtained through surveys)
• Transit coverage analysis
• Traffic volume counts
• Major activity centers
• Vital services coverage (police, fire, hospital, etc.)
 Transportation Planning Studies
• Roadway inventories:
• Classification and administration
• Geometric features
• Physical conditions
• Traffic control devices
• Parking inventories
• Number of legal and illegal spaces by location and type (e.g.
on street, off-street, angled)
• Ownership of spaces
• Availability of spaces
• Time limit and hours of operation
• Rates by location
• Special (trucks, taxi, passenger loading and unloading zones
—especially at airports)
 Transportation Planning Studies
• Roadway Classification
• Jurisdictional Classification
• Functional Classification
• Major highway system
• Freeways, expressways, and major arterials
• Local street system
• Minor arterials, major and minor collectors, and local roads
• Access Classification
• Cul-de-sacs (high access) to freeways (limited access)
Access Classification
Transportation Planning Studies

• Analyze existing conditions

• Land use and transportation relationships
• Bottle-necks/choke points in the traffic stream
• Population and economic trends
• Short-term project list (land use and transport)
• Major investment studies
• Corridor studies (see page 100 in the text)
Transportation Planning Handbook, pg. 101
Transportation Planning Studies

• Traffic and Travel Volumes

• Annual traffic—important for road maintenance
• Average daily traffic—annual average daily traffic (AADT)
• Hourly traffic volumes
• Short term traffic volumes—5, 6, 10 , 12, or 16 minute intervals
• Traffic density—indication of level of service and number of people served
Traffic Volumes

TPH, pg. 116

 Traffic Volumes
TPH, Pg. 117
Transportation Planning Studies

• Screenline Counts
• Cordon Counts
• Future traffic volumes: travel demand modeling
• Trip generation, trip distribution, mode split, traffic
assignment
• Capacity and LOS studies
• Travel surveys: when, where, how, and why people
are traveling—these are the basis for nearly
everything we do in transportation planning
Transportation Planning Studies

• Travel surveys:
• Roadside surveys
• Postcard surveys
• License plate surveys
• Vehicle intercept surveys
• Household travel surveys
• Workplace and major generator surveys
• Transit surveys
• Lots more (e.g. freight and trucking, taxi, etc.)
Transportation Planning Studies

• More Terms:
• Travel time—the time taken by a vehicle to traverse a
given segment of street or highway.
• Congestion—travel time or delay in excess of that
normally incurred under light- to free-flow travel
conditions.
• Mobility—the ability of people and goods to move
quickly, easily, and cheaply to where they are destined.
• Accessibility—the achievement of travel objectives within
time limits regarded as acceptable.
Transportation Planning Studies

• Types of trips
• By purpose:
• Home based work
• Home based other
• Shopping, doctor’s appointment, etc.
• Non-home based
• Work to home, work to lunch, work to work, shopping to dry
cleaners, etc.
• By origin/destination:
• Internal-internal
• Internal-external
• External-internal
• External-external—sometimes called through trips