CE 3500

Transportation Engineering

Spring 2011

This course is designed to teach students the basics of transportation engineering, including planning, operations, and design. Notes, homeworks, and practice exams will be posted here as the semester progresses.

Syllabus

Information on group assignments (including group listing)

Homeworks

Homework 1, due February 4. Survey data. Solutions.
Homework 2, due February 28. Solutions.
Homework 3, due March 7. Solutions.
Homework 4, due April 6. Solution to first two problems by Excel, and solution to third problem.
Homework 5, due April 18. Solutions and completed nomographs.

Group Assignments

Group Assignment 1, due February 25. Survey data, AM/PM peak network file, Offpeak network file, and node coordinate file. (You have to fill in the OD matrices in the network files.)
Group Assignment 2, due March 25.
Group Assignment 3, due April 25.
Information on group presentations last week of class.

Notes and Utilities

Planning and the four-step model
Spreadsheet created in lab January 20
Program to do the route choice step. Sample input files for Sioux Falls and a simplified Chicago network. See lab notes for February 3 for instructions.
Program to visualize the results of route choice. You need a node coordinate file to run this (download node coordinate files for Sioux Falls and Chicago here; these files obtained from Hillel Bar-Gera.) as well as a link flows file produced by the route choice program.
Tables and nomographs for flexible pavement design.
Tables and nomographs for rigid pavement design.

Old Exams

Caveat: Each time I teach CE 3500 is a little bit different, so there may be some questions in these old exams on material which is not covered in the current course. Don't be distressed if you see something unfamiliar, just take it as an example of the type of questions I ask, and move on.

Exam 1: old exams 1 and 2. Answers to exams 1 and 2.
Exam 2: old exams 1 and 2. Answers to exams 1 and 2.

Lecture Slides

January 10 -- Course introduction
January 12 -- Four-step model overview
January 14 -- Trip generation
January 19 -- Trip distribution
January 21 -- Mode choice
January 28 -- Route choice, part the first
January 31 -- Route choice, part the second
February 2 -- Route choice, part the third
February 4 -- Planning in practice
February 7 -- Traffic flow fundamentals
February 9 -- Relationships between flow, density, and speed
February 11 -- Shockwaves
February 14 -- Shockwave examples (and four-step model review and flow chart)
February 16 -- Gap acceptance
February 18 -- Basic queuing theory
February 21 -- Signal concepts and dilemma zones
February 23 -- Signal delay calculations
February 25 -- Basic signal design
February 28 -- Saturation flow and signal LOS
March 2 -- Freeway LOS
March 4 -- Two-lane highways and roundabouts
March 7 -- Fancy intersections
March 9 -- Intelligent transportation systems
March 21 -- Vehicle performance
March 23 -- Vertical curve concepts
March 25 -- Vertical curve examples
March 28 -- Horizontal curve concepts
April 1 -- Horizontal curve examples
April 4 -- Introduction to pavements
April 6 -- Flexible pavement design
April 8 -- Rigid pavement design
April 11 -- Overview of safety modeling
April 13 -- Predicting crash frequency
April 15 -- Safety probability calculations
April 18 -- Critical issues in transportation

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