Transportation Engineering

Transportation engineering is one of the main branches in civil engineering. Airports, roads, bridges, tunnels, and the complementary structures such as retaining walls, abutments, culverts, drainage systems fall under this branch. Here remember that the structural design of bridges, tunnels, retaining structures are still performed by structural engineers specializing in this field. Some common transportation engineering failures are listed below: Underestimating the demand, which causes traffic congestion (overestimating means too costly systems, which means wasted funds, because these are very large projects) Signal, signage and traffic control system failures Pavement structural failures Drainage system failures, which can stem from the drainage defects of pavement itself, or the drainage from nearby […] Read More

Drainage is an inseparable, fundamental part of highway design. The main goal of a highway drainage system is to “keep water out of the road itself”. The reasons are obvious, such that the carrying capacity of the road will decrease, and the road will slowly erode, once the water keeps coming into the road cross section. Another important consideration is driving safety. If the water ponds on the road surface, obviously this will lead to unsafe driving conditions. To accomplish these goals, the following aspects need to be considered: Slope of the road surface along the road main axis or transverse axis toward ditches, which is one of the main […] Read More

Today in our civilization, very unfortunately, the trend of growth of our cities is of sprawling growth type. Allowing our cities to grow just by spreading outwards, is the worst thing we can do to our planet and to ourselves. Sprawling growth not only causes us to build more parking and roads, but also brings the necessity to build the accompanying infrastructure, destroys the natural environment, causes us the reach where we go in more amount of time and loss of productivity, causes noise pollution, and requires us to consume more energy. The examples of negative of effects of sprawling growth is limitless. The most effective solution seems to be […] Read More

The most economical route would be a straight route, if the ground was just flat, with strong enough soil to support the road, and not obstruction, either man made or natural. That would be the best route. But unfortunately, reality is far from that. You must overcome a lot of obstacles, not only physical but also even environmental or legal, to build the road. As a fixed variable, we know we must connect point 1 to point 2, when we plan a road. The rest, depend on many variables, including but is not limited to : The topography of the area that your road will pass from. For example you […] Read More