Experts within transportation engineering are becoming increasingly specialised. While this has some benefits, it also has disadvantages, one of the most significant being that an integrated and `holistic' transport approach is lost and `vision' becomes impaired or blurred. Additionally the transport sector has become more reliant on certain individuals within their organisations to solve site specific problems that in fact may not need to be solved if a longer term, wider approach had been considered. The challenge for transportation practitioners is to incorporate `systems approach' thinking to effectively manage the complexity and diversity of transportation and other related disciplines. This will enable the development of a more effective, planned and efficient transportation system and thereby manage the movement of goods and people in a manner that is not only `sustainable' but that provides for a `preferred future'. The paper discusses `systems' approaches to the planning and design of intersections and suggests methods and techniques available to help transportation engineers to address the appropriate transport network problems and specifically intersection planning and design in the context of the overall transportation vision and objectives. (A)
Abstract