About Transportation
Introduction
Transportation has always played an important role in the development of society, traditionally with roads and bridges, but more recently with other transportation infrastructure including highways, ports, railways, airports, tunnels and also pipelines to transport natural gas to utilities and refineries.
Transportation is critical for our daily lives, with people relying on an increasing variety of modes of transportation every day to travel to work and school, to visit family and friends and to attend business meetings and medical facilities.
Businesses in particular often need to use multiple transportation methods such as lorries, ships, trains and aeroplanes to transport products from their point of manufacturing to their point of consumption efficiently and cost effectively.
High-quality and modernised transportation systems are essential for economic and social development, and inadequate transport infrastructure can mean the difference between sustainable progress and persistent underdevelopment.
Transportation Engineering
Transportation engineering is an interdisciplinary area of civil engineering that primarily involves the application of principles from science, technology and mathematics to address the challenges associated with Planning, Design, Construction, Maintenance, Operation and Management of transportation infrastructure and facilities in order to provide solutions that are safe, efficient, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Transportation engineers have a broad range of professional responsibilities that begin with research on new projects and extend through the ongoing care of existing facilities. A transportation engineer, importantly, is not only interested in the Transport Infrastructure, but must also concern themselves with the individual mode and the users: they must understand the interaction of all three of these entities in order to understand the Transport System as a whole.
Transportation Systems
The main focus of transportation infrastructure is on the life-cycle performance of the civil engineering components of transportation, which are typically large and expensive.
Transportation infrastructure is composed of the fixed installations provided to facilitate land, water and air transport, including roads, bridges, tunnels, railways, ports, airports and pipelines, as well as other related facilities such as stations, terminals, warehouses, refuelling depots etc.
The quantity and type of infrastructure components can be considered the supply side of the equation. When people and goods have access to numerous roads, waterways, airways and railways within a city, the supply is considered to be high. If there is weaker infrastructure and fewer facilities provided for use, then the supply is low.
Transportation Challenges
As cities and towns experience rapid urbanization, transportation systems in developing countries face major transportation challenges.
These include rapid population growth, increasing private vehicle ownership, increasing traffic congestion, longer commute distances, continuing road safety problems, unchecked urban sprawl, limited access to public transportation, inefficient movement of goods, neglecting pedestrian and cyclist needs, energy consumption concerns and environmental impacts.
Therefore, transportation engineers must not only consider the supply and demand aspects of the systems, but also multiple related aspects including, but not limited to, accessibility, pedestrians and cyclists, freight, transit, integration, policies, safety, security, land use, energy and emissions.
Current challenges in transportation engineering create the need for engineers who are capable of designing and implementing innovative solutions to address the issues arising in their field. The use of technology to develop intelligent transportation systems is an ever-growing area of interest for transportation engineers.