Transportation is best considered as a socio-technical system. Insights into transportation engineering best start from this perspective, and the different forms should be viewed in a homogenous way as parts of the general transport system.
Introduction to Transportation Engineering shows how the modes are complementary to each other, and how to design and operate them, and gives some thoughts on integration. It introduces generic and universally applicable concepts, and the principles of planning and design, along with experience from local applications to enable students to solve small and medium planning problems. The book also covers system development and serves as a starting point for deeper and detailed work, while keeping an overall view and emphasising the general context. It sets transportation engineering in the context of transport history to give students a sense of its long-term development and its social, economic and technical context.
The authors bring varied and fully international experience, and present a balanced and comprehensive overview of design philosophies and approaches. This student text is not only broad and concise, but also thorough and well grounded.