Graduate / Concentrations
Transportation Planning
Movement has always been central to the economies and quality of life in cities and regions. The importance of connecting physically disparate locations spawned professions in transportation engineering and transportation planning in early 20th-century America, professions that were subsequently exported worldwide. Transportation planning has opened up previously inaccessible territory and distributed an unprecented level of mobility throughout a broad range of society. At the same time, the transportation system’s rapid growth has had serious societal, environmental, and economic side-effects. The transportation professions have frequently treated mobility as inherently desirable, neglecting the fact that access, not movement, is what people seek in a transportation and land-use system.
The transportation planning concentration builds an interdisciplinary range of skills and perspectives in transportation planning, including understandings of transportation planning’s societal roles, applied technical and evaluation skills, historical uses and misuses of transportation planning techniques, and the rich interdependencies between transportation planning and other areas of urban and regional planning.
Major themes in transportation planning include the interaction of transportation and land use planning, transportation needs of the poor, alternative approaches to public transit policy, the role of technology in improvement of transportation systems, transportation’s role in environmental quality planning, and the intergovernmental and interjurisdictional dimensions of transportation problems.
The transportation planning concentration prepares urban planning students for professional work in transportation related organizations at local, regional and national levels, and in private planning/engineering firms that are engaged in transportation planning. Transportation planners develop transportation and traffic plans, forecast travel conditions and prepare transportation demand management programs for their jurisdictions. At the broader level, transportation planners provide input into transportation policy questions, such as the relative benefit of alternative approaches to transit investment, pricing of public and private transportation, or innovative approaches to addressing needs in “welfare-to-work” transportation. New transportation technologies and institutions create opportunities that eventually change land use patterns. Conversely, new land use patterns change the burden on the transportation system and affect available transportation strategies. Transportation planners anticipate and plan for these interactions.
The concentration requires the completion of three courses, including the two foundation courses UP 572 and UP 671, and one techniques course in introductory Geographic Information Systems. Also recommended for students in the transportation planning concentration are UP 507 and an additional course from the list of Other Related Courses.
| Techniques/Methods (one GIS course is required) | |
|---|---|
| UP 406 | Introduction to Geographic Information Systems |
| UP 507 | Geographic Information Systems (prerequisite: UP 406 or NRE 531) |
| CEE 570 | Introduction to Geostatistics (requires advanced math proficiency) |
| NRE 531 | Principles of Geographic Information Systems (considered equivalent to UP 406) |
Other Related Courses |
|
| UP 539 | Methods for Economic Development Planning |
| UP 510 | Public Economics for Urban Planning |
| UP 573 | Urban and Regional Theory |
| EHS 687* | Air Quality Seminar |
| NRE 482 | Environmental Justice: Theoretical Approaches |
| NRE 570 | Microeconomics with Natural Resource Applications |
| NRE 571 | Environmental Economics (has prerequisites) |
| NRE 574* | Sustainable Energy Systems |
| NRE 527 | Social Institutions for Energy Production |
| NRE 550 | Systems Thinking for Sustainable Development |
| POLISCI 623* | Proseminar in Municipal Problems |
| PUBPOL 519 | Sustainable Energy Systems(NRE 574) |
| PUBPOL 558 | Microeconomics B: Economic Decision-Making |
| PUBPOL 559* | Accelerated Microeconomics |
| PUBPOL 569* | Applied Regression Analysis |
| PUBPOL 726 | Normative Theories of Taxation |
| PUBPOL 580 | Values, Ethics and Public Policy |
| PUBPOL 585 | Political Environment of Policy Analysis |
| PUBPOL 682 | Politics and Policies at the State Level |
| PUBPOL 686* | State and Local Policy Analysis: Focus on Development Policy |
| PUBPOL 718 | Real World Sustainability |
| PUBPOL 724 | Urban Politics |
| PUBPOL 564 | Government Regulation of Industry annd Environment |
| PUBPOL 753 | Fossil Fuel Use in the Age of Climate Change |
| PUBPOL 689 | Equality in Public Policy |
| PUBPOL 764 | Topics in Transportation Policy |
| PUBPOL 765 | Aviation and Public Policy |
| PUBPOL 775 | The History of the Automobile |
| PUBPOL 723 | Wealth Inequality and Public Policy |
| SOC 530* | Social Demography |
| STRATEGY 646* | Solving Societal Problems Through Enterprise and Innovation |
* Indicates course is a cognate.
Some students complement their concentration in transportation planning by earning a Certificate in Spatial Analysis from the Rackham Graduate School.
Faculty associated with the transportation planning concentration:
- Joe Grengs (Concentration Coordinator)
- Jonathan Levine
Others associated with the concentration:
- Lidia Kostyniuk, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and adjunct professor of urban and regional planning.
- Susan Zielinski, managing director of Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation (SMART), University of Michigan Institute for Social Research
