What Role Does Civil Eng. Play in Road Layout?

How much is the recent traffic ticket going to cost you?

In my fair city, the Transportation Department is staffed by professionals, not politicians.

They perform traffic studies, oversee the design and construction of roads, evaluate signage placement and changes based on usage and act generally unfettered by the politicians.

Unfortunately, Mayor and Council have enough power in this city to change the course of human existence, but usually don't muck around with transportation.

Your local DOT....

http://www.lexingtonky.gov/index.aspx?page=3183

I'm not so confident in the way DOT or the politicians deal with transportation. I've seen too many traffic fiasco's to believe these people who call themselves professionals, experts or engineers know what they are doing. Call me a skeptic, I've earned that title.

I'm with you Ron! I'm thinking that some of the DOT jobs in my state must be very low paying attracting only the people from the bottom of the graduating classes.

For the tax money we have to shell out, one would expect that there is a higher level of expertise than the results indicate. Most of the designs seem to be so uninspired!

Aren't civil engineers the ones who decide that water, sewer, electrical, and communications lines and systems need to go in under a road or street after it's paved and completed?

Usually in one stage and road tear up for each system opposed to doing all of the at once or before the road is completed.

I believe there is still a discipline for "Traffic and/or Transportation Engineer" available from our universities.

For sure there are many that have the title but it may be a trade driven job description rather than a degree defined occupation.

Dear Mr. NotUrOrdiaryJoe,

Your Question which reads as "What Role Does Civil Eng. Play in Road Layout?" has Primafacie Reply which can be stated,

Civil Engineer decides the Inclination of the road while turning - known as "BANKING of VEHICLE" where the Centrifugal Force of the Vehicle and the Centripetel Force is balanced and banking inclination is given by the Equation

BANKING of VEHICLE ON ROAD

Tan ά = V^2/r.g, where ά is the Inclination of the Road, V is the Velocity of the Vehicle, r is the Radius of the road, and g is the gravitational acceleration i.e 9.81 M^2.

Next, the berm, camber is decided by the Civil Engineer. But later part of the question is related to other authorities.

In this regard, vide Post No. 6, here, a seperate Descipline is started for TRANSPORT ENGINEERING.

DHAYANANDHAN.S

One advice our professors gave us that has proven to be true: If it's a political decision to build a road, don't fight it because you will always lose.

Transportation Engineering is a very challenging profession. Dealing with human nature and mother nature is not easy.

Building a new road isn't very complicated. However, 90% of the roads that are going to be built here in the USA have already been built. To upgrade a road isn't very simple when there's skyscrapers and inadequate bridges involved.

I'm a retired Civil Engineer. I retired from The Texas Department of Transportation.

Have some fun today,

PAPADOC

RMFR

Hey Papa,

Thanks for responding. Perhaps you might know how I could go about influencing my local DOT to modernize a little bit. It seems that according to the federal standards most rural traffic control rates fairly poorly. In fact, a website I visited rated most cities at either a "D" or "F" in terms of current system installations.

As an automation engineer, I'd have to agree with that assessment. It seems that the control systems and algorithms are substantially out of date. Would you agree with that?

The highway design standards are excellent. However, due to right-of-way and other constraints, most roads being upgraded must make some exceptions to the design standards.

The roads will continually be overcrowded because we're making more cars and people to drive them. And, one can't beat the convenience of the automobile. Mass transit isn't economical unless there's a population density of 40,000 per square mile. And, the tendency of the population is to move out to the suburbs.

Governments won't spend money until they have to. And, when they do, they sometimes have to raise taxes. When they raise taxes, they don't get reelected even though the additional tax is for a worthy cause. So, as they're trying to do here in Texas and elsewhere, they're building toll roads. And, even trying to convert some interstate highways into toll roads. There's a lot of opposition to the toll roads. I'm against them. If we don't have the guts to raise the taxes to build them (or cut out some other programs to free money for the highways), then we can just live with the congestion.

Have some fun today,

PAPADOC

RMFR

Typically, Traffic Engineers (a specific specialized Civil Engineering sub-discipline) are the engineers who determine anticipated "vehicle turning movements" at intersections and anticipated vehicle volumes on a given road alignment(s).

Geotechnical Engineers examine in-situ soil compositions and bearing strengths, usually utilizing soil boring data.

Highway Engineers (a specific specialized Civil Engineering sub-discipline) are responsible for the actual design of the roadway, including the following: pavement type and thicknesses; horizontal and vertical alignments; grading; drainage; aboveground and underground utilities (electric, telephone, water mains, sewers, storm sewers, signal wiring and pull-boxes, etc etc); sidewalks; crosswalks; curbing, if any; traffic and highway signage; and traffic signals.

The conduct the highway design based on the recommendations of the Traffic Engineer and the Geotechnical Engineer.