The urban transportation planning process

Abstract

The goal of urban transportation planning is to develop a plan for an efficient, balanced transportation system for an urban area—one which will promote a desirable pattern of human activities. While the process has been standardized to some extent, each study must nevertheless acquire and manage a massive amount of information about the specific region with which it is concerned. This information, together with computer representations of transportation networks and travel patterns, is used to produce estimates of future travel demand and utilization of facilities. Thus computers play an important role in providing transportation planners with the capability for evaluating a variety of proposed transportation systems in order to recommend allocation of government resources and to guide transportation policy. This paper describes specific computer applications to the process of urban transportation planning.