Transportation planning has been mainly concerned with producing long-range plans for multi modal transportation systems for intra and inter urban travel. Transportation plans have included operational improvements in existing facilities and services and location and design decision for new facilities and services. At present, many different variations in methodologies are being used in a wide variety of operational, planning, design, and policy applications, in both private and public sectors involving short range as well as long range perspectives. The main concern of all these methodologies has been estimation of travel demand and planning and design of facilities, to meet the estimated/present travel demand more efficiently i.e. improving flow and speed of goods and people being transported. The negative externalities associated with transport systems include use of scarce energy and other material resources, harmful emissions and noise, the land required for the necessary infrastructure and accidents resulting in loss of property and deaths. There has been a growing concern to include these negative externalities on the transportation planning process such that the transportation plans address the question of increasing mobility and reducing the negative externalities of transport system at the same time. This paper examines the demand and need for transportation planning and effect it has on mobility and safety. In the latter half we explore transportation planning strategies which can contribute in creating safe transport infrastructure. The major thrust is to explicitly bring out the conflicts and trade offs present in mobility and safety aspects of transport systems. (a)
Abstract