Department of City and Regional Planning
Fall 2024
University of Pennsylvania
Instructor: Dr. Erick Guerra
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This course provides an overview and introduction to urban transportation planning and policy. Although the focus is on US transportation, the course will also pay special attention to transportation issues in the fast-growing cities of the developing world. The first section of the course focuses on histories and theories of transportation. How and why do we travel? How have we gotten where we are today? The next section looks at larger policy questions, such as who transportation planning benefits and how we evaluate transportation systems. The third section is on 4-step modeling and predicting transportation demand. The final section applies what we learn in the first three sections to look at more specific policies, such as congestion charging, bicycle planning, and traffic calming.
Throughout the course, I introduce a series of labs and lectures to familiarize you with available transportation data and a variety of transportation planning methods. Please be sure to download R, R-Studio, and any indicated datasets prior to a lab session. Labs will be essential for completing semiweekly homework assignments.