Until not long ago, traffic engineers were limited to designing the infrastructure for future traffic. If demand grew strongly, traffic engineers suggested adding lanes; including the addition of double-decker urban roads.

Nowadays, due to the need for sustainable transportation, there is a tendency to build fewer roads and encourage people to use other modes that are more efficient in the use of space, such as public transportation or bicycles. Transportation demand management methods complement traffic engineering very well.

Historically, traffic engineering has tended to use the equivalent vehicle as a design element. That is, the engineer designed, planned and evaluated road infrastructure for automobiles. Recently, especially with the introduction of BRT systems, the fact of counting vehicles instead of people has been questioned (a lane of a BRT can move up to 40,000 people in an hour, while a lane of vehicular traffic can move 2,000 vehicles, which translates to, for example, 2,800 people).

The main lines of work of traffic engineers are:

Until not long ago, traffic engineers were limited to designing the infrastructure for future traffic. If demand grew strongly, traffic engineers suggested adding lanes; including the addition of double-decker urban roads.

Nowadays, due to the need for sustainable transportation, there is a tendency to build fewer roads and encourage people to use other modes that are more efficient in the use of space, such as public transportation or bicycles. Transportation demand management methods complement traffic engineering very well.

Historically, traffic engineering has tended to use the equivalent vehicle as a design element. That is, the engineer designed, planned and evaluated road infrastructure for automobiles. Recently, especially with the introduction of BRT systems, the fact of counting vehicles instead of people has been questioned (a lane of a BRT can move up to 40,000 people in an hour, while a lane of vehicular traffic can move 2,000 vehicles, which translates to, for example, 2,800 people).

The main lines of work of traffic engineers are: