Debre Birhan University

School of Engineering
Civil Engineering Department

Transport Planning

Transport Engineering– CENG 3171

 Introduction
Transport Planning

Planning:- Is the determination of future course of action to

achieve desired goals.

 Transport planning- is planning and realization of strategies

to supply the requirement of transport services to meet the
transport demand.

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 Elements of Transportation Planning

 The element of transportation planning consist

of:-
 Planning of Transport Systems/physical
planning
 Financing

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 Transportation planning process
 The transportation planning process comprises 7 basic

elements to guide the planning elements:-

 Situation definition
 Problem definition
 Search for solutions
 Analysis of performance
 Evaluation of alternatives
 Choice of project
 Specification and construction
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5

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 Urban Transport Planning
 It involves the evaluation and selection of highway or transit
facilities to serve present and future land uses.
 For example, the land use new shopping center, airport,
convention center, new residential development, office
space, industrial parks and etc … require additional
transportation services
 Urban transportation planning is concerned with two separate
time horizons
 short-term project
 Long term project
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 UTP……(cont’d)

Urban transportation planning process

 It can be carried out in terms of the procedures outlined

previously and is usually described as follows.

 Inventory of Existing Travel and Facilities- data collection
 Establishment of Goals and Objectives
 Generation of Alternatives
 Estimation of Project Cost and Travel Demand
 Evaluation of Alternatives
 Choice of Project- some time may involve a public
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 UTP(cont’d)
Urban Transport Infrastructures
 New roads

 New car parks and terminals

 LRT (Light Rail Transit)

 RBT (Rapid Bus Transit)

 Cyclic infrastructure

 Walking areas

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 Transport planning policy Approaches

-Objectives-led approach
- Problem-oriented approach

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9 3 09/25/2021
 Evaluating transport alternatives
Criteria for Evaluating Transportation Alternatives are:

Capital costs
Vehicle operating costs
 Construction
Facility operating costs
 Right of way
 Vehicles Safety
Maintenance costs Social & environmental
Travel time costs
 Total hours and cost of system  Noise
travel
 Visual quality
 Average door-to-door speed
 Community cohesion
 Distribution of door-to-door
10 speeds  Air and water 09/25/2021
quality
 Evaluating …..(cont’d)
Evaluation Based on Economic Criteria
 It requires the measure of effectiveness that can be converted
into monetary units.
 The total costs of each alternative are user and facility costs,
and then
→ the project with the lowest total cost is selected
→ It is completed benefit-cost ratio (BCR)
A. Cost of a transportation facility
 First cost or capital cost (engineering design, right of way,
and construction)
 Continuing costs (maintenance, operation, and
administration)
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 Evaluating …..(cont’d)
B. User costs
 costs for vehicle operation, travel time costs, and costs
of accidents

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 Evaluating …..(cont’d)

Evaluation Based on Multiple Criteria

 This evaluation method seeks to include measurable

criteria that are not translated just in monetary terms in

addition to economic evaluation method
Numerical ranking methods, one of multiple criteria
method, require that each measure of effectiveness be
translated to an equivalent score rather than monetary unit.

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 Transport planning policy Approaches
There are in practice two different types of approach in
transport planning which can be adapted to identifying
objectives and related problems
1. Objectives-led approach It is a logical approach and is
essential that professionals are clear on the reasons for
different solution: that is, those objectives which are to be
achieved can be specified by the local authority or its elected
members. These are then used to identify problems by
assessing the extent to which current, or predicted future
conditions, in the absence of new policy measures, fail to meet
the objectives. The objectives may be economic efficiency,
environmental protection, safety, accessibility, sustainability,
equity, finance, practicability, etc.
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15 Figure: An objectives-led structure for strategy formulation 09/25/2021
 2. Problem-oriented approach
Problem-oriented approach is to start by defining types of
problem, and to use data on current (or predicted future)
conditions to identify when and where these problems
occur. This approach starts at the second box in the flow
chart in Fig.
The objectives are implicit in the specified problems, and
may never actually be stated.

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 Transport planning data collection

 Data are an essential input to the effective planning and

design of transport systems

 Data is used to elaborate cause-effect relationships
The data collection phase provides information about the
city and its people that will serve as the basis for
developing travel demand estimates. The data include
information about economic activity (employment, sales
volume, income, etc.), land use (type, intensity), travel
characteristics (trip and traveler profile), and transportation
facilities(capacity, travel speed, etc.).
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 - Random
- Stratified
- Systematic
- Cluster

Fig: Stages in the design

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and conduct of a
survey
 Data ….. (cont’d)

Sources of Transport planning data

 Two sources of data for transport planning;

 primary sources (direct surveying data) and

 secondary sources (existing data)

 The choice of data collection method depends

on purpose of data & budget allocated.

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 Data ….. (cont’d)

Existing data
 It is the first step in data collection.

 The three main sources of data are:

 Publication database
 previous local area surveys
 data produced as a by-product of control or
management system, e.g. vehicle flow past at toll point

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 Data ….. (cont’d)

Advantages
 saves lots of time & money
 when a survey is likely to cause disruption and annoyance to
the travelling public
 it is important for political reasons to be seen to be
conducting a survey
Disadvantages
 (no) knowledge of how data was collected
 definitions & categories may be different
 different spatial aggregations
 disaggregation and cross classifications may not be
available (privacy)
 access to raw data may be difficult/impractical (obsolete
media, file formats, inadequate documentation)
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 client may want new data to be collected
 Data ….. (cont’d)

Primary sources (direct surveying data)

 After careful consideration of all secondary sources of data, the
need for further data collection is established
 The primary data can be collected in the following different
methods
 Observational surveys
 Household self-completion surveys
 Telephone interview surveys
 Road side interviews/Surveys
 Household personal interview surveys
 Group discussion surveys (focus group)
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 In-depth interviews
 Data ….. (cont’d)

Advantages
 The data may be accurate
 Can achieve up to date (current condition) data

Disadvantages
 It is time and money consuming
 The quality of data depend on personal
 The data may biased to the interest of data
collector (specially at interviews)
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 Data ….. (cont’d)

Type of transport planning data

 Vehicular traffic flow data
 Public transport user data
 Pedestrian volume data
 Cyclists and cycle facilities data
 Spot speed data
 Origin-Destination (OD) cordon data
 Journey speed, travel time and delay data
 Parking use data
 Environmental impact data (noise and air

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pollution)
 Data ….. (cont’d)

Data collection sampling methods

 Data cannot be collected for the entire target population! (???)
Sampling methods
 Random sampling: all samples have an equal chance of being
selected
 It is a theoretically attractive method
 It is impractical for a “live” events
 Systematic sampling: select every nth unit
 The concept is easily understood, even by inexperienced
staff
 It is random until the first unit is selected
 All units have equal probability of being chosen
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 Data ….. (cont’d)

 Stratified sampling
 It involves division of the population into
groups on the basis of some characteristic
 Is usually applied when it is necessary to
ensure adequate representation of a minority
 Cluster sampling
 It involves selecting groups of adjacent units
(e.g. addresses on a street or a group of
vehicles following one another in a traffic
stream)
 Usually results in increased survey efficiency

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