Transportation Systems Engineering

Key Faculty: William Scherer, Preston White

Area Description: Modern transportation systems are extremely complex systems involving large-scale infrastructure, sophisticated computer, communications, and electronic components, in addition to significant human factors considerations. This complexity makes the design and operation of such systems challenging. To deal with the complexity, systems analysis (or engineering) methodology is an effective approach.
     One of the most dynamic areas in transportation is Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The future of ITS is founded in the development of system architectures that will allow for the integration of diverse transportation system components, many of which are not yet conceived. New information technologies will play a critical role in this architecture development. While a national ITS architecture has been developed, there now remains a significant challenge to design and implement real systems using real technology that meets the requirements of the "open" architecture.
Potential Courses: partial listing, see Key Faculty for details
SYS 634Discrete Event Simulation
SYS 650Risk Analysis
SYS 702Case Studies in Systems Engineering
SYS 730Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
SYS 734Advanced System Simulation
SYS 750Advanced Methods in Optimization
CE 535Transportation Systems Planning and Analysis I: Framework
CE 632Project Management
CE 635Transportation Systems Planning and Analysis II: Computational Methods
CE 636Traffic Operations
CE 637Traffic Systems Management
CE 638Public Transportation
CE 732Transportation Systems Planning and Analysis III: Integrated Model Systems
CE 734Traffic Flow Theory
CE 735Intermodal Transportation
CE 736Financing Transportation Infrastructure
CE 737Advanced Topics in Transportation
GBUS 882*Management of Service Organizations
GBUS 884Innovation and technology Management
GBUS 890*Management Decision Models
PLAN 501Urban Design
PLAN 506Analysis of the Urban System
PLAN 524Negotiating Public Policy Issues
PLAN 548Impacts of Land Development
PLAN 566State Land Use Development
GFAP 543Intergovernmental Relations
GFAP 766Policy Analysis
COMM 767Management of Information Systems
COMM 768Advanced Database Management Systems
COMM 769Advanced Systems Design
COMM 780Data Communications and Networking
CE 613Pavement Management
PLAN 505Design of Cities
ECON 771Econometrics
Example Concentration Areas

A student interested in any area has the ability to customize his course selection to fit his concentration. Possible concentrations within transportation systems include:

Transportation Systems Modeling

SYS 634
SYS 734
SYS 750
CE 637
CE 535
CE 635
Transportation Information Systems

SYS 702
CE 535
CE 732
COMM 767
COMM 768
COMM 780

Job Opportunities

Possible job opportunities for a student studying Transportation Engineering include public transportation agencies (federal, state, and local), private transportation consulting firms, and planning think tanks.

* - Each class is 1.5 Credits