SEQUITIN, Camille Andrea B.

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September 4, 2015

Transportation is a part of our daily lives as it is essential to us because of the constant need to interact and move things around the
society. Thus, the study of transportation engineering is a must for us to further enrich the transportation system that we have so that our society
may grow by the application of the knowledge that we acquire in our respective classes.
Throughout the duration of learning in our class, a lot has been discussed in relation to transportation and one of this is about the
components of highways pavements which are the surface courses which consists of asphalt Portland cement, next is the base courses which consists
of aggregates then the subbase which is composed of local aggregates sometimes with application of geotextiles which add strength and control
moisture. It is necessary for us to know the basic components of a highway pavements because it is something that we must be knowledgeable
about when we are constructing highways and roadways. We must also retain in our minds the discussed lesson about the design considerations of
highway pavements and this considerations are the traffic loads, effects of environmental considerations, load bearing capacity and the availability
of materials. This considerations will be the factors that must be determined for us to design our roadways in the future. We must also be able to
know that different kinds of failures and the respective solutions of the two most common type of pavements that we use which is the asphalt
concrete pavement and the Portland cement concrete pavement. The corresponding failures and solutions are alligator cracking, block cracking,
transverse cracking, longitudinal cracking, raveling, bleeding and flushing and drip track for asphalt concrete pavements which is proposed to be
resolved by the application of bituminous seal coats, concrete overlays and recycling of asphalt concrete pavements. The corresponding failures for
the Portland cement concrete pavements are faulting, settlement, blownups, joint or cracking spalling, surface attrition or surface abrasion and
surface polish which can be resolved by the installation of edge drains to reduce pumping, grinding of slabs to correct faulting, replacing the badly
cracked slabs, asphalt concrete overlays, grooving to reduce hydroplaning and use of thin concrete surface treatment. This information about the
failures and their equivalent solutions is a great tool for us in the future since this mode of failure will surely be experienced in the future and those
given solutions will be necessary for us to combat it and thus, those lesson is valuable and must be taken deeply in our attention. Aside from the
highway pavements, which is the common transportation system that is used, railroad track is also used as it provides greater speed and faster mode
of transportation which is especially used for accessibility to far places. Thus, since this mode of transportation is also used commonly and will
soon be available in our hometown, the lesson about the railroad track which includes its functions and structural design and maintenance is very
essential for us. The overall track structure consists of the subgrade, the ballast, which is rest on the subgrade; the ties, which are embedded in the
ballast and the rail fastening which rests on the tie plates and are fastened to the ties by spikes. The traffic in the railways can be interchanged
between lines only by means of diverging and merging since trains are unable to turn through sharp corners. Trains are also not maneuvered by
steering wheels instead, they just follow the track itself for guidance and are merged and diverged by means of a switch. Just like the highways
pavement, the railways also have their own mode of failure which are the flange wear, joint batter and the wheel burns. Since railroad tracks were
discussed on the previous reports, we should take into considerations some traffic analysis that is commonly used in analyzing the traffic flow of
the transportation system is which through space-time diagrams, by queuing analysis and by network analysis. This methods on analysis can be
used in the issues involving the interaction of traffic events in space and time, analysis of travel times under various conditions and relationships
among traffic flow states such as flow, speed and density. In using the space-time diagrams, it can be recalled that there are no firm axis in which
the distance is assigned as well as the other axis which corresponds to time. Because of that, the flexibility of the diagram is often used for direct
graphical solutions concerning trains time arrival and distance covered and airport capacities. In queuing analysis, the major issue in the analysis
of the traffic system is the travel time and the delays which is the time required to cover a fixed distance and the difference between the actual travel
time and the given travel time, respectively. The queuing theory involves the analysis of what is known as the queuing system which is composed
of the server, stream of server, which demands the service, and the queue which is the line of customers that is waiting to be served. Queuing theory
aims to investigate the aspects of the number of customers in the system, the utilization of the servers, the number of waiting customers, the response
time of a customer, the waiting time of the customer, the idle time of the server and the busy time of the server which is honestly very evident in
our day to days lives such as lining up for ticket buying which greatly involves us, the customers and the owners and servers. It very important for
us to know this so that we may apply this in our designs and allocation of people and hatching ideas. We are also exposed to common queuing laws
such as the FIFO (First In First Out) which is the most common law in almost all the queuing lines to cater the person which allocated extra effort
to be early so that they may be served early and to finish early. Another law is the LIFO (Last Come First Out) in which states that those who come
later leaves earlier. Another one is the RS (Random Service) which there is a random way of selecting the customer that will be catered and last is
the priority which is evident in our priority lanes for the elderly and the disabled so that they may find comfort in queuing lines. Transportation also
have negative effects in our environment in which we must mitigate to minimize the damage it can cause. One of the most common problem in
transportation is the noise that it creates such as noise from vehicles on the roadways, railways airports that can greatly affect those that live beside
those areas which may irritate them and can affect their performances. It is known to us that the only range that we can tolerate when it comes to
noise is about 50 to 70 dBA in which when it reaches 80 dBA, it could become irritating to the person that experiences such noise thus, we must
learn how to mitigate this noises. With regards to aircraft noise, we minimize the damage that it cause by carefully planning the cities zones in
which we specify which area should not be constructed with residential buildings and which area is best allocated for industrial and commercial
zones. There is also great relevance in learning about the transportation technology that we have and we must remember some traffic data needed
such as density, which is the number of vehicle per unit distance occupying a section of a roadways; occupancy, which is a fraction of time that
vehicles are present at a point in space; headways, which is time of separation of vehicles in the traffic stream and is usually measured in seconds;
gaps, which are measured from the rear of one vehicle to the front of the next; flows, which is the number of vehicles per unit time passing a point
in space; volume, which is the number of vehicles counted in a specified time interval and lastly, the speed which is the rate of change of distance
with respect to time. It is very important for us to familiarize this traffic data because we will be dealing on this when we design roads. There are
two ways in analyzing traffic, one is through arithmetic mean/ time-mean speed and the other is through space-mean speed. There are also two
types of traffic flow models that describes the relationship among traffic states such as speed, flow and density. The first type is the microscopic
models which describes the motion of individual vehicles and their interactions with one another and the second type is the macroscopic models
which describes the relationship among speed, flow and density. These are often conceived of as analogies to classical fluid flow, and attempt to
describe the propagation of traffic flow states over extended sections of roadway. It not enough that we analyze our traffic by its density and
accessibility but we must consider that safety of our transportation and we must know what factors must have affect some transportation accidents.
The major factors that involves transportation crashes involves the action of the driver, the condition of the vehicle, the geometric characteristics
of the travelway and the environmental conditions. This errors should be mitigated though the learnings that we have.
Throughout those lessons that we have learned, we must always find a way to not just learn and remember it but to apply it in our
respective lives and actions. We must always consider this learnings as a milestone in which this can become a great tool that we must use for us
to accomplish more in life and so that we may serve fully and endearingly. We must also be proficient enough to know how we may be able to
share this knowledge that we acquired to others as this learning will be very much useful not just for us but for everyone.