Investigating the Inclusion of Traffic Operations Concepts in Undergraduate Civil Engineering Curricula

Transportation engineering education has been a topic of interest for researchers in recent decades. Existing surveys of transportation engineering education focus largely on the introductory transportation engineering course and does not consider the extent to which different focus areas are covered in those courses. Traffic operations is a critical focus area within transportation engineering and is considered a focus area of the field by industry professionals and educators alike. Thus, investigation into traffic operations is covered in introductory and secondary courses across different instructors and universities is essential to gaining insight into the current state of transportation engineering education. This paper documents the results of a survey of how traffic operations concepts are integrated into undergraduate level civil engineering curricula in the United States and how these topics are taught. A survey was distributed to faculty at universities with civil engineering programs across the United States. The survey responses reveal concepts related to traffic operations are covered in a large majority of introductory transportation courses and many universities offer a secondary course covering concepts related to traffic operations. The survey also reveals that, while most instructors utilize active learning strategies in their classrooms, there is little collaborative effort that goes into developing these strategies. These findings warrant further investigation into the benefits that could accompany collaborative development of active learning strategies.