Transportation/Traffic Engineering and GIS

[aaronz82]

I'm going to a 3 day seminar this week in Albany, NY to learn some more GIS for my job. (I did take a couple courses in college) But I was just wondering how GIS can be used as a Transportation Planner/Traffic Engineer? What kinds of applications can it be used for in my field?

The only thing I could come up with so far is to put a certain distance buffer around a project site and figuring out how many people live within that area, as a way to determine the draw for a bank or fast food restaurant or any other kind of development.

thoughts anyone?

 

[ACtrafficengr]

For starters,

- sign inventories - The county I work for has 7800 signs on our 290 miles alone. The City of Albany, a mid-sized city, has 3 times that.

- Culvert inventories - with NPEDES/SPEDES getting more and more strict, culvert inventories are becoming more prominent

- Traffic safety network screening - crash reports are being geocoded

I'm not far from Albany - is this seminar open to the public? Is it appropriate for a rank GIS newbie?


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"...students of traffic are beginning to realize the false economy of mechanically controlled traffic, and hand work by trained officers will again prevail."

Wm. Phelps Eno, ca. 1928

 

[aaronz82]

^ It is in Johnstown, NY which I guess is pretty close to Albany. It is a 3 day class put on by ESRI at Fulton County Community College. It is open to anyone that wants to take it, but it is pretty expensive...I think about $1000-$1500. I'm pretty much a newbie myself, I took some lower level GIS courses a few years ago when I was at SUNY Albany, but I haven't used it since I graduated so this would be a refresher course for me.

 

[francesca]

Most of the larger transport modeling packages interface with GIS nowadays. Emme/2 has its own custom GIS (Enif) , as does the Cube suite of tools.

I'm not sure if there's a GIS bolt-on package that can perform modeling within a standard GIS package (ArcMap/MapInfo), but it makes sense that there should be. Land-use, population and transportation network information is readily available in GIS format, and all transport modeling software does is use such information and conduct complex calculations. I've never used TransCAD but if I read that link correctly, then that is similar to what TransCAD is. This link seems to be what I described, though.

 

[jeremyk55]

Our local GIS database (LOJIC - Louisville/Jefferson County Information Consortium)has been very helpful for use in planning and corridor studies. From the database, we are able to obtain building footprints, edge of pavement, approximate right of way and property lines, storm and sanitary locations, other utilities etc. The mapping can be converted to .dxf format to be used in cadd drawings and we have also been able to obtain vertical data to create DTMs. With all that said, you have to keep in mind that the accuracy is generally not sufficient for final design, only planning.