Urban transportation planning methods in China

With the economic developments in China, there is a great need for a better transportation system to accommodate the increasing traffic demands of persons and freight, which have resulted in high congestion in the transportation system. In order to better understand the transportation system, it is necessary to use effective transportation planning methods including transportation models and transportation planning packages that represent these models. These packages have been used very widely in many developed countries like the USA Canada and European countries. However, the packages and the transportation models have been used on a relatively small scale, by only a fraction of the 666 cities in mainland China. In this paper, we review the urban transportation planning process, the transportation planning technology and the transportation models that have been used in China, and provide some analysis of the situations.