TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS MODELING AND EVALUATION. IN: HANDBOOK OF TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING

This chapter describes how transportation includes infrastructure, administration, vehicles, and users and it can be viewed from various aspects, including engineering, economics, and societal issues. A transportation system can be defined narrowly as a single driver/vehicle with its second-by-second interactions with the road and other vehicles. The system can also be identified broadly as a regional transportation infrastructure with its year-by-year interactions within the regional economy, the community of transportation users and owners, and its control components such as transportation administration and legislature. These two extremes exemplify the range of transportation systems with various intermediate scenarios possible.