Transportation Engineering Terms

1. Transport - is a science that concerns with the efficient movement of people and goods that is undertaken to accomplish objectives to complete tasks that require transfer from one location to another. 2. Transportation Engineering - is concerned with the application of scientific principles to the planning, design; operation & management of transportation systems. It is a sub-speciality of civil engineering. However, it is inherently multidisciplinary overlapping diverse fields as economics; psychology; geography; city planning; public administration; political science; industrial & electrical engineering. 3. Modal networks - are considered highway, rail, waterway, and pipeline and their intermodal connections. 4. Airports and airline service networks are deliberately excluded, as air transport is markedly different in character from the surface transportation modes. 5. Transportation system - is made up of links, nodes, and a number of other design variables. Designing a transportation system is then a matter of assigning values to each variable. 6. Contract Carriers - provide service to public under individual contractual arrangement. 7. Common Carriers - offer scheduled service and are open to all member of public willing to pay the posted fare. 8. Mass transportation or Mass transit - refer to the common carriage of passengers, taxi, or car rental. 9. Water transport - is found within urban areas, it is related to passenger transport. 10. Highway system - is used by private vehicles, truck lines, and bus lines. Highway systems serves intercity passengers; freight transportation; urban passenger transport & distribution of goods. 11. Light rail - A term embracing a wide range of electrical powered vehicle running on steel rails (metro). Passengers board from road surface or low plat form. It operated along street but maybe provided with exclusive right of way. 12. Rapid rail transit system called metro - is the underground tube operate on exclusive R.O.W and relatively high speeds & provide highest line capacity available. 13. Para-transit - A term applies to small passenger vehicles operating informally on fare-paying basis & serving in some places as an alternative to regular bus transit services. 14. Tram “street car” - Vehicles received their power from overhead power. They are operating on tracks sharing the roadway with cars and buses. 15. Driving task – monitoring and responding to a continuous series of visual and audio cues. 16. Operational (Control) – vehicle control through second-to-second driver’s actions, speed. 17. Tactical (Guidance) – vehicle guidance through maintenance of a safe speed and proper path. 18. Strategic (Navigation) – the driver obligates in route planning. 19. Visual acuity - It refers to the sharpness with which a person can see on object. Visual acuity is either static no motion involved and dynamic relative motion involved. 20. Sign - should be legible at a sufficient distance in advance so that the motorist gets time to perceive the sign, its information and perform any required maneuver. 21. Kinematic - is the study of motion irrespective of the forces that cause it. 22. Kinetic - is the study of motion t hat accounts the forces that cause it. 23. Transportation system - can be defined narrowly as a single driver /vehicle with its second-bysecond interactions with the road and other v ehicles.

24. System - can also be defined broadly as a regional transportation infrastructure with its year-byyear interactions with the regional economy, the community of transportation users and owners, and its control components such as transportation administration and legislature. 25. Transportation models - are a formal description of the relationships between transportation system components and their operations. 26. Travel demand - is typically defined as the volume of travelers willing to travel between two locations. 27. Intersection - is an areas shared by two or more roads with various degree of complexity, whose main function is to provide for change of routine direction. 28. Traffic island - is a defined area between traffic lanes that is used to regulate the movements of vehicles or as to serve as a pedestrian refuge, vehicle traffic is excluded from the island area. 29.