spring 2006
CRP 384:
Metropolitan Transportation Studies with TransCAD GIS
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This is a skill-building course. Its primary goal is to equip students with the state-of-the-practice computing technology in transportation planning. Most lectures and exercises involve working with TransCAD, a GIS package developed primarily for transportation planning and modeling purposes.
In addition to learning the operation of TransCAD GIS through lab exercises, participants of the class are required to complete a term project, utilizing the skills they have learned to analyze specific transportation issues. The specific type of project varies each time when the course is offered. In this semester the project is to expand a TransCAD-based GIS data bank for the Austin metropolitan area along with a set of land use-transportation indicators. At the end of the semester, each participant will receive a CD containing the data bank, which can be used for future purposes such as professional report, thesis, and academic research. Detailed instructions on exercises and the final project will be given separately.
The specific learning objectives of this course are to:
- Understand GIS fundamentals, including GIS concepts, data structure, and comparative features of common software packages (e.g., TransCAD, ArcInfo, ArcGIS/ArcView, MapInfo);
- Increase proficiency in GIS routine operations such as thematic mapping, data conversion, and table join;
- Develop strong capability to perform spatial analysis, such as spatial query, overlay operations, and geo-coding;
- Become experienced in applying TransCAD to the four-step travel demand forecasting and modeling (trip generation, trip distribution, mode choice, and traffic assignment); and
- Explore creatively the applications of TransCAD GIS to other analytical tasks, for example, accessibility modeling, shortest path finding, urban mobility performance, or those specific to students' own areas of study and interest.
The course requires large amount of independent work and places a significant emphasis on hands-on experience. Upon completion of the course, the student is expected to become an experienced TransCAD operator for applications in transportation planning and modeling and in policy analyses of metropolitan transportation issues. As more and more MPOs (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) in Texas and throughout the country adopt TransCAD GIS to develop and update their regional transportation plans, students with TransCAD skills are found very competitive in the job market.
TEXTBOOKS
- Caliper Corp. 2000. TransCAD Transportation GIS Software User's Guide.
- Caliper Corp. 2000. Travel Demand Modeling with TransCAD 4.8.
The above two textbooks will be provided by the instructor. Supplementary materials will be placed on reserve or provided in electronic files.
PREREQUISITE
This is an intermediate-level course in transportation planning and GIS. While there are no prerequisites for the class, students who have no prior working knowledge in GIS, transportation planning, or quantitative methods will need to make extra efforts to meet the course's expectation.
Due to the limitation in the number of software licenses, the class size is limited to a maximum of fourteen. Two students will share one license.