Transportation Systems and Service Policy

Book excerpt: The many aspects of urban transportation planning and design demand a multi faceted approach to ensure responsive, economical, and environmentally sensi tive facilities that enhance mobility. Yet all too easily the complexity of the process can obscure the major elements. This book aims at assisting the analyst to provide decision makers with a range of solutions by illustrating how service policies regarding quality of service, fares, investment levels, and environmental impacts affect and are affected by each other. This book, therefore, concentrates on the process of planning and design. It addresses the major elements of urban transportation planning, design, and impact estimation, and offers practice in undertaking typical projects. It focuses on the linkages and interaction with public policy regarding user service levels, and the resulting design and impacts. The process is illustrated by (1) outlining the individual transportation analysis and design techniques and their linkages, (2) describing the planning and design process, from population changes affect ing demand and mobility needs to estimation of air pollution and energy use impacts that are instrumental in shaping public policy and strategic planning, (3) presenting examples of transportation design projects showing how service policy may affect the physical and operational design of multimodal, urban trans portation systems, (4) enabling the readers to obtain practice in basic, applied transportation analysis, design, and impact estimation by defining the key service policy variables of projects for solution, and (5) familiarizing the reader with