The Transportation Planning Process

The transportation planning process, and the travel demand modeling phase of the process, has been described as more art then science. Because of this, it is extremely difficult to provide more than a brief introduction to the topic in the limited space of this chapter. An introduction to transportation planning, however, is considered essential in understanding the multimodal, interdisciplinary nature of transportation engineering. It is through the transportation planning process that many of the basic decisions concerning the location, size, and timing of transportation improvements are made.

Transportation planning is an ongoing process which seeks to assess the short-and long-range transportation problems of a region and to develop, evaluate, select, and implement plans and strategies for solving those problems. The travel demand modeling phase of the transportation planning process is based on the interaction between two basic systems: the transportation system (origins, destinations, volumes of people and goods) and the activity system (land uses, population, social and economic activities) within which the transportation system operates. Specifically,...