THE EDUCATION OF

TRANSPORTATION PLANNING PROFESSIONALS

 

INTRODUCTION

The practice of transportation planning at the regional level has evolved substantially over the past several decades.  Once defined as largely a technical exercise, in which the calculation of required roadway capacity was the pre-eminent activity, transportation planning now encompasses a wide range of sometimes conflicting problems and demands, from growing levels of congestion and worsening air quality to neighborhood preservation and social equity concerns.  Federal transportation policy, as now shaped by the Transportation Efficiency Act of the 21^st Century (TEA-21), dictates both the factors that state and local officials must consider and the kinds of processes they must use in developing transportation plans.  As a result, transportation professionals now more than ever need an extensive base of knowledge and a broad set of skills - technical skills but also communication skills, for example - to effectively perform their jobs. 

But are the curricula in the planning and engineering programs that educate and train transportation professionals adequately preparing them for these new challenges?  Planning programs, for example, may introduce students to transportation modeling techniques but do not often provide the opportunity for meaningful hands-on experience in developing and applying such models.  Engineering programs, on the other hand, may provide sufficient technical training but little exposure to public involvement theory and techniques.  With limited course hours in which to cover the broad field of transportation planning, programs must pick and choose what material will be required for all students, what material will be covered in elective courses, and what material will be left to an internship sand on-the-job training.  The resulting curricula may leave important gaps for those planning and engineering graduates who pursue careers in or related to regional transportation planning.  These gaps in training potentially reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of transportation planning practice and may ultimately impact our communities in negative ways. 

The objective of the study summarized in this paper was to compare the kinds of knowledge and skills important to transportation professionals today to the kinds of knowledge and skills that planning and engineering programs provide their students in order to highlight areas for improvement and suggest ways to enhance the education of transportation professionals.  The study addressed three general questions: 

 

1.      What skills and knowledge do today’s transportation planners need? 

2.      What skills and knowledge are planning and engineering programs providing?

3.      How well do these match? 

 

The research involved several components:  a literature review on transportation education and planning education, an analysis of ISTEA and TEA-21 planning requirements, construction and analysis of a database on planning programs and selected transportation engineering programs as to their course offerings in the area of transportation planning, a survey of transportation planning professionals, and interviews with selected transportation planning educators and professionals.  This paper summarizes some of the key findings from those efforts. After a review of previous studies, the results of the review of planning and engineering program are summarized, followed by a summary of the results of the survey of transportation planning professions.  The paper concludes with a discussion of several important issues for transportation educators that emerged from this research.

 

Previous studies

The question of the match between the knowledge and skills that transportation planners need and the knowledge and skills provided by planning and engineering programs has been addressed in a handful of previous studies.  Most of these studies have been instigated by a significant change in the transportation planning field, for example, the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991.  The underlying question in these studies is whether and how quickly the curricula of planning and engineering programs are adapting to the changing demands of the field.  For example, in the early 1980s, Hoel (1982) identified the completion of the Interstate system and the budget constraints that were to follow as a significant change in the field that would necessitate a new emphasis on planning, management, and policy in transportation education.

More recently, Sussman (1995) drew conclusions about the future needs of transportation professionals from several trends: the transfer of technology from the military to the civilian arena in the post-Cold War age, the increasing complexity of transportation systems, the tie between the transportation system and the national economy, and international competition.  Given these trends, he argued that the “New Transportation Professional” must have skills that are both broad, in the sense of understanding the big picture of transportation, and deep, in the sense of being an expert on one part of the continuum.  He warned that academia tends to change incrementally so that it might take a long time to transform a program to meet these new demands.  He also argued that implementation of his suggested program would require the inclusion of many different kinds of instructors, not necessarily from the transportation field. 

A study by Turnbull (1995) explored the match between professional needs and academic programs in more depth.  Her work included a review of relevant legislation (ISTEA, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and the Americans with Disabilities Act), a review of problem statements from professional associations, and interviews with transportation professionals from the private and public sector representing all levels of transportation planning.  Through this work she constructed a list of skills and knowledge areas that were then used to evaluate transportation planning curricula in the United States.  Turnbull concluded that several new topics should be covered in introductory transportation planning courses, including multimodalism (while still covering the basics of individual modes), relevant legislation, and emerging technologies.  In her conclusions, she also emphasized the need for transportation planners to be comfortable with both the technical and public involvement skills required today.

In 1997, The Transportation Research Board held a conference specifically aimed at evaluating the education and training needs of implementing all aspects of multimodalism (Meyer 1998).  At the time, a review of 67 transportation programs across the United States found that 43% of the programs had added courses related to multimodalism in response to ISTEA, 28% had included multimodalism in the curriculum before ISTEA, and the others either made no change or minor curricular changes (Pignataro and Hoel 1998).  The general conclusions from this review were that programs need better communication between relevant departments and that support by administrations for interdisciplinary programs needs to be increased. 

Studies of planning programs in general, rather than transportation planning programs specifically, have also generated relevant recommendations.  Ozawa and Seltzer (1999) studied the connection between the content of planning programs and the needs of the profession that will employ graduates of these programs.  First, they analyzed the specific skills being sought by entry-level planners and compared those to graduate planning curricula.  Professional planners were then asked to rank 45 skills that Ozawa and Seltzer gleaned from previous studies and University faculty.  The skills related to job performance as well as advancement within the organization.  They found that the most highly rated skills were those related to communications: working well with colleagues, working with the general public, and understanding the needs of the client. 

The study summarized in this paper builds on these previous studies but makes several new contributions.  First, ISTEA has now been in place for ten years, enough time for planning and engineering programs to have responded to the new transportation planning context if they are going to.  In conjunction with the previous studies, this study provides a monitoring of sorts of the progress of these programs.  Second, this study looks more directly at the match between professional needs and academic programs by asking practicing professions about their own job experiences and their assessment of applicants for entry-level transportation planning positions.  That the recommendations that emerge from this study are similar to those from previous studies suggests that these recommendations need to be voiced once again.

 

Curriculum Analysis

In order to characterize the current state of transportation planning education, an investigation of both the transportation-related training offered by planning programs and the planning-related training offered by transportation programs in engineering, policy and other fields was completed.  For planning programs, research was limited to those 66 U.S. schools that offer at least a master’s degree in planning, as listed by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).  For non-planning programs, research was limited to U.S. universities with membership in the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC).  In each of these 53 universities, transportation-related departments with links to the research center (62 departments in all) were characterized in terms of their planning offerings for graduate students. 

A complete and accessible source of data for this analysis was found in each school’s online catalog of degree requirements and course offerings.  Data was gathered regarding each program’s offerings in terms of degrees, concentrations, and transportation planning courses.  The course offerings of planning programs were easily categorized, generally on the basis of course title.  Only graduate-level courses with specific transportation content were considered for this study;. general skills or methods classes such as statistics or geographic information systems (GIS) were not counted.  For the non-planning programs, however, the criteria for identifying “planning-related” courses required more detailed standards.  In addition to general transportation planning, the following subjects were included: travel demand forecasting/modeling; environmental impact assessment; transit planning; transportation economics; introductory transportation system management; evaluation, survey and statistical methods in transportation planning; introductory intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and others Alternately, the following subjects, usually regarded as transportation engineering, were excluded: traffic control and operations; logistics; advanced transportation systems management; engineering-based computer simulation; traffic and safety; airport/railroad/waterway transport; advanced ITS; and independent study or short-term courses for professionals only. 

In addition to the compilation of degree, concentration, and course offerings, more detailed analysis was conducted for several of the planning and transportation programs.  Eight planning programs offer seven or more transportation courses, while 13 universities offer seven or more planning courses in their transportation-related departments (excluding planning programs).  Each of these departments or programs with extensive course offerings was characterized in more detail from online materials and direct contact with the schools when necessary.  Both summary statistics and more detailed information on specific schools are presented below.

 

Transportation-Related Offerings in Planning Programs

Of the 66 U.S. planning programs that offer the master’s degree, 24 also offer a Ph.D. degree, and eight offer both of these in addition to a bachelor’s degree.  Nearly half (32 programs) offer a concentration in transportation planning, and six schools offer joint degree programs in transportation, all of which are in conjunction with departments of civil engineering.  On average, planning schools offer 2.6 courses in transportation planning, but a very high standard deviation of 2.9 indicates significant variability in the importance planning programs place on transportation planning education.  In fact, 19 of 66 planning programs in the U.S. offer no transportation planning courses whatsoever, while only six programs offer more than eight courses in transportation planning. 

The most common courses offered, by topic, include: general transportation planning (including urban transportation planning; offered by 31.4% of schools), transportation policy planning (12.2%), transportation and land use/growth management (11.0%), seminar or special topics in transportation (9.9%), and transportation systems planning/analysis (7.0%).  Two-thirds of the transportation courses offered to graduate planning students are taught by faculty members within the planning department, while 20% are taught in engineering departments, and 13% in various other departments, including geography and public policy.

In those planning schools that offer the most transportation-related courses, the approach to curriculum can be divided into three types.  Some schools, such as the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Iowa, administer transportation planning courses and degrees wholly within their planning departments, providing their own courses, taught by their own faculty.  Some other schools work within inter-departmental or inter-collegiate arrangements because they lack the faculty or facilities to provide coursework adequate to cover the complex field of transportation.  For example, planning students with a transportation planning concentration at Rutgers University have a chance to take various courses within the school offered by the planning department and the civil and environmental engineering department, and they can also select courses from two other neighboring schools, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Princeton.  At the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Florida State University, and the University of Minnesota, planning students are encouraged to combine interests in transportation, land use, environment, growth management, and so on by taking courses from other departments in addition to their own offerings.  The third type of curriculum approach is exemplified by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which offers no concentration in transportation.  Transportation-planning students nonetheless have the opportunity to choose from an extensive array of transportation-related courses, ranging from transportation planning, policy, and economics to transportation engineering and advanced system management, through an inter-departmental curriculum.  These course offerings are administered by MIT’s Center for Transportation Studies (CTS).  The planning department at University of California at Irvine (UC Irvine) has a similar system, in cooperation with the Institute of Transportation Studies.

 

Planning-Related Offerings in Transportation Programs

Among the 62 non-planning programs affiliated with CUTC, 45 are housed in engineering departments, typically civil or civil and environmental engineering.  One tenth are housed in interdisciplinary departments of transportation studies or transportation science, and another tenth are housed in public policy.  Of these transportation-related programs, 93.5% offer the master’s degree, and 69.4% offer both master’s and Ph.D. degrees.  Four of the CUTC universities offer a joint degree engineering and either planning (UC Berkeley, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Georgia Tech) or public policy (University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)).  Programs typically offer an average of 3.8 planning-related courses, but there is significant variability, as 15 programs offer none or only one such course.

The transportation planning courses most common in non-planning programs are generally similar to those most frequently offered in planning programs: 27.2% of the CUTC members offer general transportation planning, 11.9% offer transportation systems analysis/planning, and 8.9% offer transportation policy planning.  However, it is much more common for the non-planning schools to offer transportation finance/economics (12.3%, compared to 5.2% for planning schools) and public transportation/transit (11.4%, compared to 5.8% for planning schools).  The majority of these courses (75.8%) are taught by civil engineering faculty members, roughly matching the general participation of civil engineering programs in CUTC.

Thirteen schools offering more than seven planning-related transportation courses were analyzed in more detail.  Among them, four offer more than ten graduate courses: The City College of New York (CCNY), UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and UT Austin.  UC Irvine has the most varied and extensive offerings, as its Institute for Transportation Studies is sponsored by several units: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, and School of Social Ecology.  CCNY also provides a wide variety of courses for transportation planning students, with offerings in various fields such as economics, asset management, systems, environmental issues, demand forecasting, policy, and evaluation.  Both UC Berkeley and UT Austin have joint degree programs in transportation, with the Department of City and Regional Planning (M.S/M.C.P.) and School of Public Affairs (M.S./M.P.A.), respectively.  

 It appears that several civil engineering departments are giving transportation students the opportunity to take in-house planning-related courses when they are not available from the planning department or when a planning department does not exist.  For example, civil engineering departments at the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Massachusetts, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Virginia offer many transportation planning-related courses in addition to their standard transportation engineering courses.  At several other universities, departments other than civil engineering and planning provide significant degree and course offerings for graduate students.  As an example, George Mason University’s School of Public Policy has a master’s program in Transportation Policy, Operations, and Logistics.

Most notably, some schools have been developing interdisciplinary graduate programs, administered by the university transportation research center, which sometimes even offers its own graduate professional degrees or certificates in transportation.  The New Jersey Institute of Technology has an interdisciplinary program in transportation; students in Northwestern University‘s Transportation Center study with various faculty members in engineering, management, and economics; MIT’s Center for Transportation Studies links six departments and provides the interdepartmental Ph.D. program in transportation as well as an M.S. in Transportation (M.S.T.).

 

Conclusions on Curriculum Analysis

What this research most clearly shows is that there is no standard or uniform approach to transportation planning education, within either planning schools or non-planning transportation programs.  The number of transportation planning courses offered and the content of such courses are highly variable.  Non-planning programs (the majority of which are engineering programs) offer 3.8 transportation planning courses on average, while planning programs offer 2.6 on average, but some programs offer two or three times as many transportation planning courses.  Several of the leading transportation education programs offer potential models of interdisciplinary curricula, but none has yet established a standard for the field.  A more detailed analysis of the content of transportation planning courses guided by the survey results described below, to be completed in the subsequent phase of this study, should offer more insights into the range of topics covered and the depth of coverage of each topic in these programs.

 

Survey of Professionals

To directly test the match between professional needs and academic programs, an on-line survey was developed and administered to self-identified transportation planning professionals.  Based partly on the results of the literature review and review of ISTEA/TEA-21 planning requirements, lists of knowledge and skill areas potentially important to transportation planning professionals were developed.  These lists were used in several key questions in the survey relating to the respondent’s own professional and educational experiences and to the respondent’s assessment of applicants for entry-level transportation planning jobs.  Several questions relating to the demographic characteristics and educational attainment of the respondent were also included in the survey, as was a series of attitudinal questions relating to current issues in transportation planning.  Several open-ended questions enabled participants to provide unstructured responses.  The survey was pretested by eight graduates of the University of Texas, and several modifications to the survey were made based on the results of this pretest.  Websurveyor, a professional on-line survey service, hosted the survey.  This service automatically tallies the survey responses and provides basic analysis capabilities. 

Finding transportation planners to participate in the survey was not a simple task.  Graduates of transportation planning programs, for example, do not all work in the field of transportation planning, and not all transportation planners have graduated from transportation planning programs.  To achieve a relatively targeted sample of transportation planners, two groups of professionals were invited to participate in the survey: members of the American Planning Association (APA) Transportation Planning Division and members of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Planning Council.  Using the listserves for these organizations, an e-mail was sent to members from the sponsoring organization with an introduction about the research project and an invitation to participate in the survey.  Because not all members of these organizations are practicing transportation planning professionals, the e-mail notice asked recipients who are “working as transportation planners” to participate in the survey.  In order to simplify survey participation, no identification codes were used to control the participation in the survey. 

This method for administering the survey did not produce an entirely random sample of transportation planning professionals.  First, not all transportation planners are members of these organizations.  Second, not all members of these organizations have provided e-mail addresses.  Third, participation depended on self-identification as a “transportation planner.”  Fourth, although a precise response rate cannot be calculated, the response rate appears to be relatively low.  The notice was sent to 1,041 APA members and to 1,100 ITE members.  After four weeks, 360 surveys had been completed, with 23 others deleted for incomplete responses on key questions.  Despite these limitations, the sample should be sufficient for the exploratory objectives of this study.

 

Respondent Characteristics

Of the 360 respondents, 43% said that they work for a private consulting firm, 11% at a metropolitan planning organization (MPO), 24% at other regional or local agencies, 9% at state or federal agencies, with the remainder at non-profit or other organizations.  The results presented below thus reflect to a large degree the experiences of planners in private consulting firms. Of the 360 respondents, 44% have a masters degree in planning, 16% a masters degree in engineering, 11% a masters degree in another field, 2% a masters degree from a joint program, and the remaining 24% do not have a masters degree.  The results presented below thus reflect to a large degree the experiences of graduates of planning programs.  Respondents reported that they have worked in the transportation field for an average of 13.7 years, with nearly half working in the field for less than 10 years and 15% working in the field for 26 or more years. Over 70% of respondents were male.  Fifty-three percent of respondents said they were contacted through the APA listserve, 31% through the ITE Planning Council listserve, 9% through other means (perhaps from colleagues), and 7% said they didn't know.  In the next phase of the project, the survey results will be analyzed by type of employing agency, degree type, time in the field, gender, and contact listserve. 

 

Professional Experiences

To characterize the nature of the work done by respondents, the survey asked about the duties included in the respondent's current position.  Over three-fourths of respondents said their duties included analyzing project alternatives, conducting public involvement, developing long range plans, and assessing the community impacts of transportation projects.  About two-thirds of respondents said that their duties included prioritizing projects and analyzing and developing policy, and just over half said their duties included assessing the environmental impacts of transportation projects.  In addition, the survey asked respondents to indicate what share of their job they would describe as "planning" and what share as "engineering."  Fifty-nine percent said their jobs were "mostly planning," while 33% of respondents said "some planning; only 7.2% of respondents said their jobs were "all planning."  In contrast, only 10.7% of respondents described their jobs as "mostly engineering."  This finding is not surprising, given the two listserves used to distribute the survey.  Interestingly, though, 64% of respondents said that their jobs involved "some engineering."  These results suggest that the profession of transportation planning is defined by a balance between the fields of planning and engineering. 

The survey asked respondents about the importance of their formal degree programs in providing the skills and knowledge necessary for their current jobs and about the importance of other forms of education.  On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 equal to "not at all important" and 5 equal to "very important," respondents rated their formal degree programs a 4.0 on average.  However, informal on-the-job training from supervisors or colleagues and personal experience were both rated higher, at 4.4 and 4.6, respectively.  Continuing education programs, employer-provided training, and professional workshops were rated 3.2, 3.4, and 3.7 on average, respectively.  In addition, the survey asked respondents if they agreed that "A planning degree is excellent preparation for the job duties of a transportation planner."  The average score on a 5-point Likert scale (1 equal to "strongly disagree," 5 equal to "strongly agree") was 3.4, with 35% of respondents saying they agreed somewhat with the statement and 14% saying that they strongly agreed.  These results suggest a relatively positive assessment of transportation planning curricula but also significant room for improvement.

In order to assess in more detail the match between the knowledge and skills needed for the respondents' current jobs and those provided by their formal degree programs, the survey asked a series of three questions.  First, respondents were asked to rate the relative frequency with which they address a list of 25 topics and the relative importance of a list of 20 skills (both on a 5-point scale, with 5 equal to "daily" or "very important").  The respondents were then asked to indicate how much time was devoted to each topic or skill in their formal degree program, from "not covered," to "minor portion of course" to "major portion of course" to "full course."  Finally, respondents were asked to indicate whether they think they received the right amount of exposure to the topic or skill in their formal degree programs.  The results of these questions are summarized in Table 1 and Figure 1 for topics and Table 2 and Figure 2 for skills. 

The top five topics in descending order of importance were: regional transportation planning, transportation and land use connection, public involvement, multi-model integration, and travel demand forecasts (Table 1).  Most respondents said that these topics were covered as minor or major portions of courses, but significant shares of respondents said that the topic was not covered at all.  Most notably, 35% of respondents said that travel demand forecasts were not covered in their formal degree programs.  In their responses on the third question (whether they had received the right amount of exposure to these topics), respondents indicated that their degree programs did not provide enough exposure to any of the 25 topics: no topic received an average rating equal to or above three, or "about right."  The five most important topics all scored between 2.0 and 2.3, suggesting a need for more attention in transportation planning curricula.  The lowest scores on this third question were for air quality conformity (1.9), bicycle and pedestrian planning (2.0), and intelligent transportation systems (2.0). These scores perhaps reflect the relatively recent priority given to these topics in transportation planning.  Current students may be getting more exposure to these topics than the respondents, who completed their degrees many years ago on average.

The top five skills in descending order of importance were: public speaking, data presentation, working with the public, technical writing, and writing for the public.  For public speaking, data presentation, and technical writing, most respondents indicated that these skills were covered as minor or major portions of courses, and notable percentages indicated that they were covered as a full course.  For working with the public and writing for the public, however, nearly a third of respondents said that these skills were not covered at all.  As was the case for topics, respondents indicated that their degree programs did not provide enough exposure to any of the 20 skill areas.  Data presentation and technical writing received average scores of 2.7 and 2.5, respectively, while the remaining top five skills received average scores below 2.3.  The lowest average scores were for budget preparation, TransCAD software, and GIS.  As was the case for the lowest scoring topics, the scores for the latter two skills may reflect their relatively recent emergence as important tools for transportation planners.

 

Planning vs. Engineering Degrees

The match between professional needs and academic programs may depend on the type of academic program the respondent attended.  Thus it is important to separately analyze these questions by type of degree.  Selected results for respondents with masters degrees in planning (158 respondents) and masters degrees in engineering (56 respondents) are presented in Table 3 (topics) and Table 4 (skills).  These results show some interesting and potentially important differences.

The ratings of the importance of the different topics to the respondent's current job (with importance defined as the frequency with which the job addresses that topic) follow similar patterns for planning masters and engineering masters, with a few notable exceptions (Table 3).  Planning masters rate land-use planning, bicycle and pedestrian planning, environmental and sustainability issues, and environmental justice significantly more important than do engineering masters, while engineering masters rate travel demand forecasts, safety, travel demand management, transportation control measures more important than do planning masters.  These differences undoubtedly reflect the correlation between degree and job duties.  The percent of respondents reporting that these topics were not covered in their degree programs differs more significantly between planning masters and engineering masters, although high percentages of both report that important topics were not covered.  Over 46% of engineering masters said that public involvement was not covered, versus only 9% of planning masters.  Nearly a quarter of planning masters said that regional transportation planning and the transportation and land-use connection was not covered; these results, though perhaps surprising, are consistent with the finding in the curricula analysis that only half of planning programs offer courses in transportation planning.  High percentages of both planning masters and engineering masters report that bicycle and pedestrian planning, urban design, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), environmental justice, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and air quality conformity were not covered in their programs.

The ratings of the importance of the different skills to the respondent's current job also follow similar patterns for planning masters and engineering masters with a few notable exceptions (Table 4).  Planning masters rate almost all skills at least somewhat lower than engineering masters, a finding that suggests that other skills besides those included on this list may also be important to planning masters.  The most significant differences in ratings between engineering masters and planning masters occur for budget preparation, traffic impact analysis travel demand modeling, facility design, and Highway Capacity Manual software.  Again these differences undoubtedly reflect the correlation between type of degree and job duties.  The percent of respondents reporting that these skills were not covered in their degree programs differs in important ways between engineering masters and planning masters.  Most notably, 30% of engineering masters report that public speaking was not covered, over 60% report that working with the public was not covered, and 71% report that meeting facilitation was not covered; note that engineering masters rate these skills as of even higher importance than do planning masters. High percentages of planning masters say that traffic impact analysis and facility design were not covered; although these are not the most important skills for planning masters, average ratings still suggest that these skills are important.  High percentages of both planning and engineering masters indicate that GIS and budget preparation were not covered.

 

Assessment of Applicants

In addition to asking respondents about the match between their own job needs and educations, the survey asked those respondents involved in hiring decisions for professional transportation planners in the past three years to rate the importance of each topic and skill for entry-level planners and to rate recent applicants on their knowledge and abilities in these areas (both on 5-point scales).  The top five topics in descending order of importance were: transportation and land use connection, regional transportation planning, public involvement, professional ethics, and land-use planning (Table 5).  (The appearance of land use twice in this list is notable and may be connected to the spread of planning concepts like smart growth and new urbanism.)  The respondents also rated applicants higher on average on their knowledge of these topics than other topics, suggesting satisfaction with applicants in this sense: they are most knowledgeable on the most important topics.  However, the average ratings of the knowledge of the applicants were lower than the average ratings of the importance of knowledge for all topics.  Although the scales on the two questions do not perfectly match up, this gap may suggest that respondents would like to see applicants with better knowledge of these topics. 

The top five skills in descending order of importance were: technical writing, data presentation, data collection, public speaking, and writing for the public (Table 6).  The respondents rated the abilities of recent applicants in data presentation and data collection relatively high, but gave applicants only moderate ratings for their skills in public speaking, technical writing, and writing for the public.  As was the case for topics, the average ratings of the abilities of the applicants were lower than the average ratings of the importance of abilities for all skills.  Although again the scales on the two questions do not perfectly match up, this gap suggest that respondents are dissatisfied with the abilities of applicants in these skills.  The respondents rated applicants highest on average for their abilities in IS perhaps reflecting the attention that this skill is now given in transportation planning programs.

 

Conclusions on Survey Analysis

The initial survey results suggest that most planning and engineering programs are covering most of the knowledge and skills that transportation planners need at about an adequate level.  While that finding could be interpreted as good news for the profession, it also suggests substantial room for improvement.  Perhaps the most striking result is the importance of public involvement and communication skills for the respondents and for entry-level planners coupled with the high share of respondents, especially those with masters degrees in engineering, that say that these skills were not covered in their degree programs.  These skills are rarely the focus of an entire course, and even when they are incorporated into a course, students are often required to apply their existing skills in these areas without much formal instruction on how to improve them.  On the other hand, respondents with planning degrees are often missing out on the development of technical skills.  The survey results also point to a lag between the skills and knowledge needed by transportation planners today and those they acquired in their degree programs many years earlier.

 

ISSUES FOR TRANSPORTATION EDUCATION

The literature review, the curriculum analysis, the survey of professionals, and interviews with selected professionals and educators together point to several important and interrelated issues that transportation educators must resolve.  The following comments are a synthesis of critiques and recommendations from all of these sources.

 

Communication Skills

The importance of communication skills is emphasized by just about everyone, researchers, professionals, and educators alike.  This set of skills includes writing, data presentation, public speaking, and interpersonal relations.  The challenge for transportation educators is to find effective ways of improving the communication skills of their students.  Giving students practice in writing reports for the public or making presentations at public meetings is a start, but students also need more formal training to fully develop these skills. 

 

Educator-Professional Link

The lag between the changing transportation planning context and the content of transportation planning curricula suggests a need for strong and respectful links between the professionals and educators.  Many such links currently exist:  professional planners serve on the accreditation teams for planning programs, educators work with professionals on consulting projects, and so on.  Yet formal mechanisms for feedback from professionals to educators on the content of their curricula may be too rare.  Part of the problem may be the attitude of educators that they know best what it is their students should be learning.

 

Theory-Practice Tension

A related issue is an age-old tension between the teaching of theory and the teaching of practice.  Professionals often fail to see the importance of the theory they learned as students.  Students are often anxious to acquire the skills that they believe will help them land a good job.  Educators often find it difficult to teach theory in ways that convince the students of its importance and incite their interest in the material.  Yet theory helps transportation planners understand the phenomena they work with and the inherent subjectivity of the work they do.  Theory thus provides them with another important tool for doing good work. 

 

Critical Thinking

Teaching transportation planning students to think critically is another important challenge for transportation educators.  Transportation planners must understand both the strengths and limitations of the tools and techniques they use.  They must be able to identify the different perspectives from which a problem can be defined or a solution evaluated.  They must be able to acknowledge how their own attitudes and experiences influence the work that they do.  They must be trained to question their work and the work of others in constructive ways.  To meet this challenge, educators must think critically about their own work, in particular, the style of their teaching.

 

Political Context

An ability to work in an increasingly politicized climate is another requirement for today’s transportation planner.  Good communication skills, shared insights from experienced planners, a knowledge of planning theory, and critical thinking skills all contribute to this ability.  Giving students a taste of the political realities of transportation planning and the kinds of compromises necessary for completing projects is another important challenge for transportation educators and demands creativity in the design of courses and class exercises.

 

 

 

Multi-Disciplinary Connections

Just about everyone also argues for the importance of multi-disciplinary connections to meet these challenges.  Many programs appear to have made at least some of these connections, if only motivated by necessity rather than pedagogy.  A few programs appear to have made these connections in a meaningful way, ensuring an education balanced between traditional technical skills and the “softer” kinds of skills demanded of today’s transportation planners.  The experiences of these programs may provide important guidance for the others on how to create an effective multi-disciplinary transportation planning program.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

This paper was developed as part of the University Transportation Centers Program, which is funded 50% with general revenue funds from the State of Texas.  The authors wish to thank Maria Lane and Jennie Terry for the invaluable assistance on this research.

 

 

References

 

Hoel, Lester A., 1982, “Transportation Education in the United States,” Transport Reviews, v. 2, no. 3, 279 – 303.

 

Meyer, Michael D, 1998, “Charge to the Conference,” Conference Proceedings 17: Intermodal Transportation Education and Training, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.

 

Ozawa, Connie P. and Ethan P. Seltzer, 1999, “Taking Our Bearings: Mapping a Relationship Among Planning Practice, Theory, and Education,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, v. 18, 257 – 266.

 

Pignataro, Louis J. and Lester A. Hoel, 1998, “College and University Transportation and Logistics Programs,” Conference Proceedings 17: Intermodal Transportation Education and Training, TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.

 

Sussman, Joseph M., 1995, “Educating the ‘New Transportation Professional’,” ITS Quarterly, Summer, 3 – 10.

 

Turnbull, Katherine F., 1995, “Transportation Planning Education in Urban and Regional Planning Graduate Programs,” Transportation Research Record 1498, 57 – 64.