Transportation planning vs engineering
Submitted by: prairiesheep
14 June 2007 - 4:32am
Hello everyone, just looking for some pointers.
Is there really a point where the work of a transportation planner stops and those of a transportation engineer starts? For instance, in the case of a rail line, does the work of a planner stops with the proposal of the line and its alignment, or does it go beyond, into choosing carriages, locating stations, determining headway, or calculating fare structures?
From what I can gather from books, the areas of work for both fields seem to overlap.
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They seem to always go hand in hand
I am relatively new to the field, so other people probably have more info, but where i work some of the "planners" have engineering backgrounds. On all the proposals the planners and the engineers are always working together. The engineers crunch numbers or design facilities and the planners present the demographic data, and write the reports that go with the specs. However as planner you may need to prepare intersection volume data, and road network schematics, before the engineers can come in and design the lane widths and curbs, and things like that. A lot of the transportation planning process is planning not engineering. For roads the planners step in with mitigation efforts, presenting graphics to city councils and neighborhood groups, and handle the Environmental analysis.
When it comes to mass transit there are a lot of non-engineering things that go into the planning. Routes need to connect population centers with employment centers. Projects need to be guided through the political process (more of a senior level job). Right of way needs to be chosen and then acquired. And operating budgets need to be proposed and evaluated.
Don't think of planning and engineering as sequential phases, rather these are parallel processes that influence each other.