HOW TRAFFIC ENGINEERS CAN HELP MAKE TRANSIT SUCCESSFUL

In the past several years there has been a noticeable shift in political support and funding for "nontraditional" transportation projects -- translation -- "multimodal:" solutions which include modes other than cars. While policy-makers and transportation planners have largely embraced this approach, many traffic engineers have resisted the trend as being in conflict with good traffic engineering practice. This paper presents a case for traffic engineers having a "misunderstanding" of transit-oriented solutions to transportation problems. The opposite can be said for many transit planners with respect to their attitude towards traffic engineering. In fact, traffic engineers should be transit's best friend, since most of the marginal improvements in transit speed and reliability can be attributed to better traffic operations.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • The paper was also presented at the 67th ITE Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, Ausgust 3-7, 1998, and the full conference proceedings are available only on CD.
• Corporate Authors:

  Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)

  Washington, DC  United States 
• Authors:
  • Samdahl, D R
  • Bay, P N
• Conference:
  • Transportation and Sustainable Communities -- Challenges and Opportunities for the Transportation Professional. 1997 ITE International Conference.
  • Location: Tampa, Florida
  • Date: 1997-3-23 to 1997-3-26
• Publication Date: 1997

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: p. 155-157

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Development; Highway operations; Multimodal transportation; Public transit; Traffic; Traffic engineering
• Old TRIS Terms: Transit development plan
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I21: Planning of Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00740573
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 25 1997 12:00AM