What Is Transportation Engineering? A Guide for Civil Engineering Students

Transportation engineering applies engineering principles to the movement of people and goods. It sits within the broader civil engineering discipline and connects infrastructure, operations, data, planning and system performance.

Depending on the role, a transportation engineer may analyse traffic volumes and speeds, evaluate intersections and corridors, design or review transportation facilities, build traffic simulation models, study public transport systems, work with travel demand data or support transportation planning and policy studies.

Common areas include traffic engineering, transportation planning, highway engineering, public transportation, transport modelling, traffic operations, intelligent transportation systems, pedestrian and cycling planning, freight and logistics, and transportation infrastructure.

Transportation systems engineering looks at transportation as an interconnected system. Engineers may study how demand, network supply, operations, technology and human behaviour interact rather than examining one facility in isolation.

A strong starting sequence is fundamentals of traffic flow and transportation planning, followed by data analysis, traffic survey methods and software such as GIS, microsimulation or network modelling. Transport Studies combines online courses with practical transportation analysis resources.