PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT OF ROADS & HIGHWAYS

Highway Engineering
Highway Engineering is an engineering discipline branching from civil engineering that involves the planning,
design, construction, operation, and maintenance of roads, bridges, and tunnels to ensure safe and
effective transportation of people and goods. Highway engineers must take into account future traffic flows,
design of highway intersections/interchanges, geometric alignment and design, highway pavement materials
and design, structural design of pavement thickness, and pavement maintenance.

Engineers in this specialization:

1. Handle the planning, design, construction, and operation of highways, roads, and other vehicular
facilities as well as their related bicycle and pedestrian realms.
2. Estimate the transportation needs of the public and then secure the funding for the project.
3. Analyse locations of high traffic volumes and high collisions for safety and capacity.
4. Use civil engineering principles to improve the transportation system.
5. Utilizes the three design controls which are the drivers, the vehicles, and the roadways themselves.

Planning and Development

Highway planning involves the estimation of current and future traffic volumes on a road network.
Highway engineers strive to predict and analyze all possible civil impacts of highway systems. Some
considerations are the adverse effects on the environment, such as noise pollution, air pollution, water
pollution, and other ecological impacts.

Financing
Developed countries are constantly faced with high maintenance cost of aging transportation highways.
The growth of the motor vehicle industry and accompanying economic growth has generated a demand for
safer, better performing, less congested highways. The growth of commerce, educational institutions, housing,
and defense have largely drawn from government budgets in the past, making the financing of public highways a
challenge.

Environmental Impact Assessment

The economic growth of a community is dependent upon highway development to enhance mobility.
However, improperly planned, designed, constructed, and maintained highways can disrupt the social and
economic characteristics of any size community.
Common adverse impacts to highway development include damage of habitat and bio-diversity,
creation of air and water pollution, noise/vibration generation, damage of natural landscape, and the
destruction of a community's social and cultural structure.

Highway Safety
Management of safety is a systematic process that strives to reduce the occurrence and severity of
traffic accidents. The man/machine interaction with road traffic systems is unstable and poses a challenge to
highway safety management. The key for increasing the safety of highway systems is to design, build, and
maintain them to be far more tolerant of the average range of this man/machine interaction with highways.
DESIGN
Highway design involves the consideration of three major factors (human, vehicular, and roadway) and how
these factors interact to provide a safe highway.
Human factors include reaction time for braking and steering, visual acuity for traffic signs and signals, and
car-following behaviour.
Vehicle considerations include vehicle size and dynamics that are essential for determining lane width and
maximum slopes, and for the selection of design vehicles.
Highway engineers design road geometry to ensure stability of vehicles when negotiating curves and grades
and to provide adequate sight distances for undertaking passing manoeuvres along curves on two-lane, two-way
roads.

Geometric Design
Highway geometric design primarily refers to the visible elements of the highways. Highway engineers
who design the geometry of highways must also consider environmental and social effects of the design on the
surrounding infrastructure.

MATERIALS

Flexible Pavement Design

A flexible, or asphalt, or Tarmac pavement typically consists of three or four layers. For a four layer
flexible pavement, there is a surface course, base course, and sub base course constructed over a compacted,
natural soil subgrade. When building a three layer flexible pavement, the sub base layer is not used and the base
course is placed directly on the natural subgrade.

Rigid Pavement Design

Rigid pavements are generally used in constructing airports and major highways, such as those in
the interstate highway system. In addition, they commonly serve as heavy-duty industrial floor slabs, port and
harbour yard pavements, and heavy-vehicle park or terminal pavements. Like flexible pavements, rigid highway
pavements are designed as all-weather, long-lasting structures to serve modern day high-speed traffic.

Flexible Pavement Overlay Design

Over the service life of a flexible pavement, accumulated traffic loads may cause excessive rutting or
cracking, inadequate ride quality, or an inadequate skid resistance. These problems can be avoided by
adequately maintaining the pavement, but the solution usually has excessive maintenance costs, or the
pavement may have an inadequate structural capacity for the projected traffic loads.

Rigid Pavement Overlay Design

Near the end of a rigid pavement's service life, a decision must be made to either fully reconstruct the
worn pavement, or construct an overlay layer. Considering an overlay can be constructed on a rigid pavement
that has not reached the end of its service life, it is often more economically attractive to apply overlay layers
more frequently. The required overlay thickness for a structurally sound rigid pavement is much smaller than for
one that has reached the end of its service life.

Drainage System Design

Designing for proper drainage of highway systems is crucial to their success. Regardless of how well
other aspects of a road are designed and constructed, adequate drainage is mandatory for a road to survive its
entire service life. Excess water in the highway structure can inevitably lead to premature failure, even if the
failure is not catastrophic.
Problem of Transportation System in the Philippines
Traffic and related environmental problems have reached serious proportions in Metro Manila, affecting
its more than 10 million residents, with vehicles traveling on the average no faster than 15 kph on a weekday
along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue.
Traffic Management Improvements along the EDSA, Light Rail Transport (LRT) 2 and 3 and South Luzon
Expressway corridors to improve street level collection and dispersal of passengers. MMDA is the implementing
agency for this component.

Marikina-Rizal-Pasig (MARIPAS) Access Improvements in the Marikina Valley, including the Marikina
Bridge and access road component and the Marcos Highway and Ortigas Avenue Extension. DPWH is the
implementing agency for these MARIPAS access improvements.
Secondary Roads Program for 15 road sections, including pavement rehabilitation, drainage and
sidewalk improvements, traffic management, and construction of missing links for comprehensive corridor
treatment so that there will be better traffic dispersal and lesser congestion in arterial roads. DPWH will be the
implementing agency for 10 of the roads while MMDA will implement for the other 5 roads.

Non-motorized Transport in the City of Marikina under Global Environment Facility funding which will
pilot a bikeways system to connect communities with employment centers and LRT stations. The City of
Marikina will implement this component.

Institution Building/Technical Assistance to establish and strengthen institutions responsible for future
urban transport management in Metro Manila. This is targeted at and will be implemented by the MMDA. The
Global Environment Facility was established to forge international cooperation and finance actions to address
four critical threats to the global environment: biodiversity loss, climate change, degradation of international
waters, and ozone depletion.

Notable Problems in Transportation System in the Philippines

Traffic Congestion and Parking Difficulties

Congestion is one of the most prevalent transport problems in large urban agglomerations, usually
above a threshold of about 1 million inhabitants. It is particularly linked with motorization and the diffusion of
the automobile, which has increased the demand for transport infrastructures. However, the supply of
infrastructures has often not been able to keep up with the growth of mobility. Since vehicles spend the majority
of the time parked, motorization has expanded the demand for parking space, which has created space
consumption problems particularly in central areas; the spatial imprint of parked vehicles is significant.

Congestion and parking are also interrelated since looking for a parking space (called "cruising") creates
additional delays and impairs local circulation. In central areas of large cities cruising may account for more than
10% of the local circulation as drivers can spend 20 minutes looking for a parking spot. This practice is often
judged more economically effective than using a paying off-street parking facility as the time spent looking for a
free (or low cost) parking space as compensated by the monetary savings. Also, many delivery vehicles will
simply double-park at the closest possible spot to unload their cargo.
Longer Commuting
On par with congestion people are spending an increasing amount of time commuting between their
residence and workplace. An important factor behind this trend is related to residential affordability as housing
located further away from central areas (where most of the employment remains) is more affordable.
Therefore, commuters are trading time for housing affordability. However, long commuting is linked with
several social problems, such as isolation, as well as poorer health (obesity).

Public Transport Inadequacy

Many public transit systems, or parts of them, are either over or under used. During peak hours,
crowdedness creates discomfort for users as the system copes with a temporary surge in demand. Low ridership
makes many services financially unsustainable, particularly in suburban areas. In spite of significant subsidies
and cross-financing (e.g. tolls) almost every public transit systems cannot generate sufficient income to cover its
operating and capital costs. While in the past deficits were deemed acceptable because of the essential service
public transit was providing for urban mobility, its financial burden is increasingly controversial.

Difficulties for Non-motorized Transport

These difficulties are either the
outcome of intense traffic, where the
mobility of pedestrians, bicycles and
vehicles is impaired, but also because
of a blatant lack of consideration for
pedestrians and bicycles in the physical
design of infrastructures and facilities.

Loss of Public Space

The majority of roads are publicly
owned and free of access. Increased
traffic has adverse impacts on public
activities which once crowded the streets
such as markets, agoras, parades and
processions, games, and community
interactions. These have gradually
disappeared to be replaced by automobiles. In many cases, these activities have shifted to shopping malls while
in other cases, they have been abandoned altogether. Traffic flows influence the life and interactions of
residents and their usage of street space. More traffic impedes social interactions and street activities. People
tend to walk and cycle less when traffic is high.

Environmental Impacts and Energy Consumption

Pollution, including noise, generated by circulation has become a serious impediment to the quality of
life and even the health of urban populations. Further, energy consumption by urban transportation has
dramatically increased and so the dependency on petroleum. Yet, peak oil considerations are increasingly linked
with peak mobility expectations where high energy prices incite a shift towards more efficient and sustainable
forms of urban transportation, namely public transit.

Accidents and Safety

Growing traffic in urban areas is linked with a growing number of accidents and fatalities, especially in
developing countries. Accidents account for a significant share of recurring delays. As traffic increases, people
feel less safe to use the streets.

Land Consumption
The territorial imprint of transportation is significant, particularly for the automobile. Between 30 and
60% of a metropolitan area may be devoted to transportation, an outcome of the over-reliance on some forms
of urban transportation. Yet, this land consumption also underlines the strategic importance of transportation in
the economic and social welfare of cities.

Freight Distribution
Globalization and the materialization of the economy have resulted in growing quantities of freight
moving within cities. As freight traffic commonly shares infrastructures with the circulation of passengers, the
mobility of freight in urban areas has become increasingly problematic. City logistics strategies can be
established to mitigate the variety of challenges faced by urban freight distribution.
MITIGATION (solution)

Ramp Metering
Controlling the access to a congested highway by letting automobiles in one at a time instead of in
groups. The outcome is a lower disruption on highway traffic flows.

Traffic Signal Synchronization

Tuning the traffic signals to the time and direction of traffic flows. This is particularly effective if the
signals can be adjusted on an hourly basis to reflect changes in commuting patterns.

Incident Management
Making sure that vehicles involved in accidents or mechanical failures are removed as quickly as possible
from the road. Since accident on average account between 20 and30% of all the causes of congestion, this
strategy is particularly important.

Carpooling
Concerns two issues. The first and most common is an individual providing rider ship to people (often
co-workers) having a similar origin, destination and commuting time. Two or more vehicle trips can thus be
combined into one. The second involves a pool of vehicles (mostly cars, but also bicycles) that can be leased for
short durations when mobility is required. Adequate measures must be taken so that supply and demand are
effectively matched.

HOV lanes
High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes insure that vehicles with 2 or more passengers (buses, vans,
carpool, etc.) have exclusive access to a less congested lane, particularly during peak hours.

Congestion Pricing
A variety of measures aimed at imposing charges on specific segments or regions of the transport
system, mainly as a toll. The charges can also change during the day to reflect congestion levels so that drivers
are incited to consider other time periods or other modes.

Parking Management
Removing parking or free parking spaces can be an effective dissuasion tool since it reduces cruising and
enables those willing to pay to access an area (e.g. for a short shopping stop).

Public Transit
Offering alternatives to driving that can significantly improve efficiency, notably if it circulates on its own
infrastructure (subway, light rail, buses on reserved lanes, etc.) and is well integrated within a city's
development plans. However, public transit has its own set of issues.

Non-motorized Transportation
Since the great majority of urban trips are over short distances, non-motorized modes, particularly
walking and cycling, have an important role to play in supporting urban mobility. The provision of adequate
infrastructure, such as sidewalks, is often a low priority as non-motorized transportation is often perceived as
not modern in spite of the important role it needs to assume in urban area
RAILWAY TRANSPORTATION

ASSIGNMENTS

Research the topics listed below regarding Railway/Railroad Transportation and put it in at least
2 pages report paper. Include illustrative pictures of the corresponding subjects. Upload all assignments
to the FB Group on or before January 18, 2019 and Report in class on January 23, 2019. Also provide
copies of your report for your classmates.

A.) Homer Bartolay

1.) Railway Surveying
2.) Rolling Stock and Track Resistance

B.) Ian Arjay Briones

3.) Permanent Way
4.) Railway Gauges

C.) Carmela Andrea Buenafe

5.) Sleepers
6.) Ballast

D.) Remelyn Caceres

7.) Track Design
8.) Plate Laying

E.) Norjel Contreras

9.) Track Maintenance
10.) Station & Yards

F.) Angelo John Javines

11.) Station Equipment
12.) Points and Crossing

G.) Pearly Masangya

13.) Signaling
14.) Interlocking

H.) Franklin Mirana

15.) Tractive Power and Tractive Resistance
16.) Philippine National Railways (PNR)

I.) Christian Pbilando

17.) Manila Light Rail Transit System (LRT)
18.) Manila Metro Rail Transit System (MRT)