Need for transportation planning

The essential purpose of transportation is to provide efficient access to various activities that
satisfy human needs. Therefore, the general goal of transportation planning is to
accommodate this need for mobility.

The general aim of urban transportation planning is to:

●​ To understand the mobility pattern in urban areas.

●​ To understand the factors that influence the level of mobility in urban areas.
●​ To develop relationships between the level of mobility and the causal factors.
●​ To use this relationship to predict the future mobility pattern in urban areas.
●​ To understand the future requirements of transportation infrastructure to meet the
future demand for transportation, using the predicted mobility pattern.

Characteristics of urban travel

The factors that influence the mobility pattern or demand for transportation, particularly in
urban areas, are mainly socio-demographic and economic factors. The socio-demographic
factors are:

●​ Population
●​ Household
●​ Age
 ●​ Cultural background

Economic factors that influence the demand for transportation are:

●​ Employment
●​ Income
●​ Vehicle ownership.

Socio-demographic factors: The most important one is the population. The larger the
population in an urban area, the greater the travel demand and a planner should be concerned
about the pattern of increasing population in urban areas. The household is the next important
factor in understanding the possible changes in the demand for transportation. A household is
a group of people who live together and share money. More trips are likely made in urban
areas when you have more households. Therefore, the number of households also influences
the travel demand irrespective of population. The next important factor is the age. The city
with a higher average age will have more older people whose mobility will be relatively less
compared to Cities with more younger and middle-aged groups of people. So, that is how
age's influence on transportation demand is understood. Lastly, cultural aspects are also
closely related to the activity pattern of households. It may have historical connections, and
the activity pattern is closely associated with the travel demand.
Economic Factors: The most important one is employment. More societal employees will
demand transportation for work trips and related activities. In other words, when you have
more employees per household, there will be more demand for transportation. Another
related economic factor is income itself; the more income there is, the greater the demand for
transportation, mainly because the increase in income might result in a higher proportion of
spending on travel. The increasing ownership of motorized vehicles can lead to a
considerable increase in travel demand.

Urban Structure

When there is a city or town, you have different activities being carried out in an urban area.
Identify the different types of activities and identify their requirements and the pattern, and
then provide the required space in appropriate location and slowly formulate the whole of the
urban area in the form of an appropriate urban structure. Urban structure may be defined as a
particular articulation or simply arrangement of adapted spaces or different types of land uses
or lands in different uses that might exist in an urban area. A critical element of an
urban-structure plan is the configuration of the transport network, since it ties together the
other components of urban structure. No activity can take place without your transportation
system, activities need mobility unless you provide transport system in place you will not be
able to connect different activity locations and make people to perform the desired activities
that is how transport network is a basic frame work required to construct the urban space.

​ The primary function of any road network is to provide mobility of people and goods.
However, there are some secondary functions also such as electricity supply, water supply,
drainage etc. Therefore, once the transport network is fixed, it is very difficult to change later
because, there will be lot of developments on both sides of your transport network and it may
be very difficult to change for the system later.

Components of Urban Structure

The main components of urban structure are:
●​ Households: These represent residential areas where people live. Households form the
foundational units of urban areas, providing population density and demand for services,
transportation, and employment.
●​ Community Centers: Smaller-scale hubs that cater to local neighborhoods, offering
basic amenities such as grocery stores, parks, and schools. They foster social cohesion
and serve daily needs.
●​ District Centers: Medium-scale centers that serve multiple neighborhoods or districts.
They often include shopping malls, cultural facilities, and specialized services like
healthcare or education.
●​ Regional Centers: Large-scale hubs that cater to the broader region. These centers house
significant commercial establishments, entertainment venues, and administrative offices,
often acting as the primary economic drivers of the area.
●​ Employment Units: These include offices, factories, industrial zones, and other
workplaces. Employment units are crucial for economic activity and play a central role in
defining commuting patterns and infrastructure needs.

Urban Activity Systems

So, broadly we can idealize that all kinds of activities in urban area which necessitates the
production of trips. Trips occur because individuals or goods need to move between locations
to participate in various activities. In the context of transportation planning, a trip is defined
as a single, one-way movement from an origin to a destination for a specific purpose. Trips
are the building blocks of travel demand analysis, and understanding them is critical for
designing transportation systems, and infrastructure. A trip involves the following:

a.​ Origin: The starting point of the trip (e.g., home, workplace).
b.​ Destination: The endpoint of the trip (e.g., office, market, school).
c.​ Purpose: The reason for the trip (e.g., work, education, shopping).

Urban activity trips can be generally classified in to four:

●​ Household-work trips: Trips made by individuals from their household to their place
of employment and vice versa. Eg. An employee traveling from home to his office.
●​ Household-service trips: Trips made by individuals from their household to access
goods or services. Eg. A family member going to a grocery store.
●​ Nonhousehold-work trips: Trips made by individuals that do not originate or end at
their residence and are work-related. Eg. A worker traveling from one site to another.
●​ Nonhousehold-service trips: Trips made by individuals or vehicles for service-related
purposes that do not start or end at a household. Eg. A person travelling from a movie
theatre to grocery store at two different locations.
However the nonhousehold based trips (starting and ending at a nonhousehold) are very rare
or too short. Majority of the trips either start or end at the household. So the urban activity
system can be classified mainly in to two:
●​ Household-Workplace subsystem
●​ Household-Service place subsystem

Urban Movement Hierarchy

Transport systems provide two fundamental functions and these are movement and access to
land-based activities. Activities are very intense and there is urgent need for accessing
land-uses at frequent intervals. At the same time people who are moving in urban areas over
relative longer distance would like to move faster to reach the places of interest. So, clearly,
we have two conflicting objectives and as planner and transport system planner and well as
land-use planner, we must try to satisfy both the objectives or achieve both the objectives
simultaneously. This can be solved by providing a hierarchy for the highway systems.
Expressways, arterials, collectors, and local roads are all part of the road hierarchy, which
categorizes roads by their functions and capacities.
●​ Expressway is a high-speed divided highway for through traffic with access partially
or fully controlled. Expressway provide for high volume and relatively fast
movements with intersections being grade separated (fly over). So, its capacity is
more high-volume lot of people can move faster simultaneously to and from major
activity concentrations like the regional centers.
●​ An arterial road is a road without controlled access that can carry a large volume of
local traffic at a generally high speed, being below expressways in the hierarchy.
Because their primary function is to connect collector roads to expressways.
Intersections of arterial roads are almost always at-grade, and use traffic signals to
coordinate traffic that would otherwise intersect. Arterial roads almost always have
multiple lanes to allow for high capacity. They do not allow for access to residential
properties under most circumstances.
●​ A collector road, also known as a distributor road, is a road that allows high access to
properties and has a low to moderate capacity and a generally low speed limit. They
are below arterial roads in terms of speed and capacity, but higher in terms of access,
as they can allow access to residential properties. Collector roads are typically wider
than local roads and usually consists of a mixture of
signalized intersections, roundabouts, traffic circles, or stop signs.
●​ A local road, also called a street, is a road in a built environment that has all kinds of
properties beside it which can be accessed from the road or a parking lot connected to
the road. They have the lowest speed limits and capacities in the hierarchy, but have
 the highest access to property. Local roads have at-grade intersections and have
similar specifications to collector roads. Local roads may be unpaved in some cases.

Types of Urban Structure

●​ Centripetal Urban Structure: Household immediately depends first on community
centres for their activities; hence many households focus on community centres.
Similarly, several community centres focus on a district centre, and the district centres
then focus on regional centres. The employment units (non-household serving
employment) are located peripherally with facility for direct access from households.
 Local roads connect the households, Collectors connect household and community
centres, arterials connect community centres and district centres, Expressways
connect district centres and regional centres. Therefore, households are located along
the local roads and the community centres are located at the intersection of collectors
and arterials. District centres are located at the intersection of arterials and the
expressways and regional centres are located along expressways. A strict hierarchy of
movement is followed in centripetal structure; A household member who want to go
to a regional centre should first come to the community centre and then go to district
centre, then only they can reach out to the regional centre.
●​ Grid type Urban Structure: As the name implies, the gird formed by the links of the
primary transport network, links of the primary transport network, provides a basic
frame work.

The figure shows a single grid, formed by four expressways (outer boundaries). The
regional centres will be located outside the grid at the intersections of the
expressways. The centroid of the grid forms the district centres at the intersection of
arterial roads. The arterial roads divide the grid in to four sub-grids and the centroid of
the sub-grids forms the community centres. And just like centripetal structure, many
households surround the community centres. The community centres are located at
the intersection of two collector roads and households are located along the local
roads. And the non-household serving employment, are located as close to the main
arterial or expressway route. In this structure there is a bifurcation at some stages
 facilitating direct reach to regional centres without passing through the district centre
or even community centres, is the difference between the centripetal and grid type
structure.
●​ Linear Type Urban Structure: All these activity centres of different hierarchical
levels are fixed on the same traffic corridor as shown in fig (a). Regional centre,
district centre, community centres and arranged in a linear fashion without any order.
Non-household serving employment centres are located separately with direct access
from households.

Local roads connect the households and collector streets connects households with
community centres. Arterials and Expressways has to be provided along the same
corridor, as everybody will be moving only along this particular stretch. Arterial roads
has to be provided to access community centre and district centres whereas
expressways are required to be provided for high speed travel between regional
centres. If the space is very narrow an elevated expressway and an arterial at the
ground level can be given. If there is space available, then the middle lanes can be
given for expressways and two arterials on both sides of the expressway.
●​ Directional Grid Urban Structure: In this structure the activity centre hierarchy is
followed same as the previous structures, but have made changes in transport route
hierarchy. Basically 4 categories of roads are there – expressways, arterials,
collectors, and local roads. But in directional grid structure 8 categories of road were
used, by subdividing the 4 existing categories in to two. One with speed function and
 other with accessibility function. Therefore, high speed expressways and highly
accessible expressways were provided based on the requirement. Both types of
expressways were having capacity to carry heavy volume of traffic. Similarly
high-speed local roads and highly accessible local roads with low volume of traffic.

Land Use
The term "land use" refers to the function or purposes related to how humans use the land.
Some examples of land use include:

●​ Agricultural: Using land for farming

●​ Residential: Using land for housing

●​ Commercial: Using land for businesses, shopping malls etc.

●​ Recreational: Using land for parks and other activities.

●​ Industrial: Using land for manufacturing, industries etc

For transportation planning, travel pattern as well as land use need to be predicted for the
horizon year as the land use could also influence the travel pattern. So, to predict the future or
horizon year travel pattern, we should have some idea about the possible land use changes. If
a residential zone has certain number of households with its own characteristics, with regard
to average household size, average vehicle ownership, average household income and so on.
But it may change during the planning period, so planners should be able to visualise, how
the household in terms of numbers and their characteristics might change in the horizon year.
Unless this change is visualised for all different types of land uses that we observed in the
base year, we will not be able to get the accurate travel pattern.

Analyzing the land use often involves categorizing land into three primary classifications:

1.​ Used Land: Areas currently being utilized for specific purposes, such as residential,
commercial, agricultural, or industrial use.
2.​ Usable Land: Areas not currently in use but suitable for development or other
purposes based on criteria like zoning laws, topography, and soil quality.
3.​ Unusable Land: Areas unsuitable for development or agricultural use, such as
swamps, rocky terrains, or protected natural reserves.
Land use – Transport Interaction

There is a closer interaction between land use and transport, how land use creates activities,
activities need transportation and transportation creates accessibility to land, again land use
gets developed and so on.

This is the cycle, let us say there is some kind of land use, it generates lot of activities,
activities means more transportation activity, more intense transportation leading to transport
system development. And once there is possibility of a mobility, demand for access to
additional land uses increases, it leads to more accessibility. Once you have accessibility
there is increase in land use. So, land use generates activities. Activities generates demand for
transportation and transportation system generates more access and so on, and this is what we
call as a land use transport feedback cycle.

Transportation planning significantly influences land-use changes, particularly the conversion

of residential areas into commercial zones. Well-designed transport systems improve
accessibility, making specific locations more attractive for businesses. For instance, areas
near major highways, metro stations, or transit hubs often experience increased demand for
commercial activities due to improved connectivity. This proximity reduces travel times for
employees and customers, encouraging businesses to establish offices, retail spaces, and
restaurants. Transport planning also impacts the economic value of land, with accessible
locations commanding higher prices, making commercial use more profitable than
residential. Planners often consider these dynamics to optimize land use, ensuring that
infrastructure investments support urban growth effectively. However, this transformation can
lead to challenges such as displacement of residents, increased congestion, and changes in
neighborhood character. Integrated transport and land-use planning can mitigate these issues
by balancing development with sustainability and community needs. Proper zoning, efficient
public transit systems, and stakeholder engagement are critical for managing the impacts of
land-use change driven by transport planning.