Blog 20: Exit Interview

Title: Exit Interview

Label: Exit Interview

Due Date: Tuesday April 29 by 8AM




Content:





(1) What is your essential question and answers? What is your best answer and why?


How can a transportation engineer best design a comfortable means of transportation in the city of Los Angeles?

- My best is answer is by using a signal timing software that simulates traffic before the project is started. This is my best answer because this is one of the most important aspects in planning and designing. Without the use of a prgram like synchro or simtraffic, engineers would have a very difficult time figuring out if the signals or the type of lanes they implement will work or not.


(2) What proc

ess did you take to arrive at this answer?


-The process I took to arrive at this answer was going to mentorship and learning the different aspects of planning with an engineer and a urban planner. While working with both of my mentors I got to experience what it is like to ana

lyze the project sites by taking surveys and then later working with engineers to input the given data into the software. The program would give us a simulation of what the traffic is like now. What we had to do was add or take off things like stop signs, protected or non protected turns, and paths or trails.


(3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?

- While working on this project some problems that I faced were gathering reliable information from the internet and not running out of articles from the internet. I resolved this problem by using Cal Poly Pomona's library database and gathering thousands of articles that I could rely on. Most of them are written by engineers and proffesors.


(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

- The two most important sources I used to answer my Essential Question were my mentor Antonio Salas who is an engineer for the private firm RBF consulting. He was a very important soource because he taught me everything that I know about transportation engineering and he helped me come up with several different answers. My second most important suource was a book called Sustainable Transportation Planning by Jeffrey Tumlin. This was also an important

source because this book gave me a lot of useful information.

Blog 19: Independent Component 2

Blog 19:  Independent Component 2 

Title:  Independent Component 2
Label:  Independent Component
Due Date:  Friday 4/25 by 8AM

Content:  

LITERAL
(a) I, Isaac Salas, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

(b) My source was my mentor Antonio Salas from RBF consulting.

(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.

(d)   During my 30 hours of mentorship I went out to the field with my mentor and learned how to anayze blueprints for future projects. I had to go through 300 or more of them per day. I also had to learn more about different types of transportation like railroad because they play a big role in transportation. I had to do hours of reading and research even when I wasnt at mentorship.

INTERPRETIVE 
Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.  

Throughout my Independent component 2 I became more familiar with the signal timing software that the consulting firm RBF uses. We used these programs to input data that was received by the urban planners. During this component I was able to see both point of views from the engineer and the planner because I went out to different cities throughout the county of Los Angeles with my second mentor to take survey sheets of future projects. These survey sheets allowed us to obtain the geometry of the intersections, off ramps, and highways. These programs use methods to determine new ways to improve traffic flow. 

APPLIED
How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 

This component helped me answer my EQ because it helped me understand tranportation a lot better and now I have a much better idea of why everything is the way it is and why there is traffic. It is not as easy as most people think to just build roads and expect for their to be smooth flowing traffic. There is a lot of analyzing and planning before anything can be built.