Lessons Every Transportation Engineer and Planner Need to Learn

This article presents 5 lessons learned by the author from his 25+ years in the transportation planning and engineering field. Many of these lessons are related to the public's perception and involvement in the traffic engineering decision-making process. The lessons can be summed up as: (1) only traffic engineers/planners understand the concept of level of service; (2) traffic engineers/planners know too much math; (3) the public often are the real local traffic experts; (4) the study area should be visited several times during the project; and (5) understanding each jurisdiction's traffic study requirements, design standards and hearing/meeting procedures is important.