Developing Curriculum and Guidelines for a Capstone-Style Transit System Planning & Design Course

Great cities don’t work without great transit. While many European and Asian cities boast of robust transit systems providing convenient connectivity and access to all types of destinations, transit in the US has mostly remained inefficient, unreliable, and limited. We can point to many possible financial, structural, political, and cultural reasons behind the lack of progress in the US; however, it is worth pointing out that it all coincides with a general lack of transit-specific education on the part of transportation engineers and planners in the US. While there are some open-access transit curriculums available online, none includes urban design components that introduce students to account for contextual access and perception aspects of transit. The purpose of developing this curriculum is to provide students with hands-on experience in designing different elements of a transit system and its operations from a systems-level perspective. The curriculum will have 3 different components: 1. A lecture component that will provide students with an overview of the principles and practices of transit system planning and design in transportation engineering. 2. A case study analysis component where students will engage in hands-on exercises that apply the concepts learned. 3. A capstone-style final project where the student groups will visit transit-oriented communities, analyze and understand the gaps between current state of practice and community needs, and then provide design recommendation for improvements. The output of this project will be open-access modules of the proposed transit planning and design course. At the minimum, we will produce: 1. A website with lecture slides, assignments, and project ideas 2. A list of references and links to other open-source transit course materials 3. Open-source data sites/repositories that may be useful for transit planning.

• Record URL:
  https://www.uno.edu/cetoc
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Funding: $20,000 USDOT Grant Funds + $10,000 Matching = $30,000 Total

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $30000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348337

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC)

  University of New Orleans
  New Orleans, LA  United States 
• Project Managers:

  Kline, Robin

  Danton, Bob

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Colorado, Denver

  Denver, CO  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Misra, Aditi

  Marshall, Wesley

  Shirgaokar, Manish

• Start Date: 20241001
• Expected Completion Date: 20250930
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Curricula; Education; Public transit; Transportation engineering; Workforce development
• Subject Areas: Education and Training; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01928841
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348337
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Aug 26 2024 3:04PM