Transportation Engineering

What you'll learn

• Describe the roles of transportation engineers, functional and context classification, and the Canadian guides (TAC, MUTCDC, provincial manuals) that govern design, and forecast design-year traffic with sensitivity tests.
• Apply driver, pedestrian, cyclist and design-vehicle characteristics, and compute stopping, decision and passing sight distance requirements on level and sloping roads.
• Use the relationships among flow, density and speed, the Greenshields model, shockwave analysis and queueing diagrams to analyse traffic states, bottlenecks and moving queues.
• Plan and analyse traffic studies, including volume counts, AADT expansion, peak hour factors, spot speed statistics, sample sizes and before-after significance tests.
• Compute flow rates, heavy-vehicle adjustments, speeds, densities, levels of service and service volumes for basic freeway segments and describe multilane and two-lane highway methods.
• Design signal timing using saturation flow, lost time, Webster's cycle, green splits, change intervals and pedestrian times, and estimate control delay and level of service.
• Analyse two-way stop control with gap acceptance, size single-lane roundabout entries, check intersection sight distance, and choose appropriate intersection control.
• Design horizontal curves for a design speed using superelevation and side friction, compute curve elements and stations, check sightline offsets and lay out superelevation transitions.
• Design crest and sag vertical curves for sight distance, compute elevations and high or low points, and coordinate vertical and horizontal alignment and rail crossings.
• Select cross-section elements, apply clear zone and roadside safety principles, design accessible pedestrian and appropriate bicycle facilities, and test the feasibility of a road diet.
• Apply the Safe System approach, crash rates, safety performance functions, the Empirical Bayes method, crash modification factors and benefit-cost analysis to safety decisions.
• Apply the four-step travel demand model, including gravity distribution, logit mode choice and BPR assignment, and assemble corridor recommendations with stated assumptions, risks and monitoring.