Lecture meets 2 times per week for 75 minutes per meeting for 15 weeks
Specific course information
Catalog description: Concepts and principles of transportation economic analysis, transportation costs and benefits, user and nonuser consequences, needs studies, finance and taxation, methods of evaluation of plans and projects, cost-effectiveness, environmental impact assessment.
Prerequisites: Graduate standing or CCE 36100 or equivalent with minimum Grade of D-
Course status: Technical elective course
Specific goals for the course
Student learning outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course the student shall be able to:
Define transportation system goals, objectives, and performance measures
Define and classify impacts of transportation systems
Estimate transportation demand and supply
Calculate agency, user and non-user costs
Conduct economic efficiency, economic impact and environmental impact analyses
Apply multicriteria analyses and transportation programming techniques
Relationship of course to program outcomes
Outcome 1: An ability to identify, formulate, and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
Outcome 4: An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.
Outcome 5: An ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.
Topics
PRINCIPLES OF TRANSPORTATION DECISION-MAKING
Steps in transportation program development process, transportation systems evaluation procedure, U.S. Legislation affecting transportation decisions
PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Properties of a good performance measure, examples of performance measures by mode and level of analysis.
TRANSPORTATION DEMAND
Measures of transportation demand and supply, transportation demand and supply curves, elasticity of demand, consumer surplus, latent demand.
TRANSPORTATION COSTS
Agency, user and non-user costs; average and marginal cost, elasticity of supply, economy/diseconomy of scale, cost functions, pricing.
TRAVEL TIME IMPACTS
In-vehicle and out-of-vehicle travel time, value of travel time, travel time reliability, revealed versus stated preference surveys, marginal rate of substitution.
SAFETY IMPACTS
Measures of traffic safety, safety countermeasures, crash modification and reduction factors, regression to the mean phenomenon, safety impact evaluation.
VEHICLE OPERATION COSTS (VOC) IMPACTS
VOC components, factors affecting VOC, VOC data sources, VOC models and tools.
ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY IMPACTS
Cash flow diagrams, equivalence equations, nominal and effective interest rate, criteria for economic efficiency evaluation, life cycle cost analysis.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (ED) IMPACTS
ED impact types, ED performance measures, economic multipliers, input-output analysis, economic simulation models.
AIR QUALITY IMPACTS
Criteria air pollutants, greenhouse gases, on-road mobile source emissions, attainment and non-attainment areas, factors affecting emissions/emission rate, air quality legislation and regulations, approaches and tools for measuring emissions, dispersion and concentration.
NOISE IMPACTS
Sources of transportation noise, sound pressure level and frequency, noise duration, reference energy mean noise emission level, traffic noise modeling, traffic noise mitigation measures, noise barrier cost estimation.
IMPACTS ON ENERGY USE
Energy sources and sinks, energy consumption and intensity, fuel economy regulations, tools used to estimate energy consumption and impacts.
LAND USE IMPACTS
Transportation-land use relationship, direct and indirect land use impacts, land use elasticity, allocation rules, gravity model, land use impact tools and legislation.
