Transportation planning and engineering is a complex job and the professionals benefit from the help of tools such as simulation softwares and CAD platforms. Besides that analysis and design is not the only task in your daily work life. Visualization of your work is another significant factor. And sometimes you need an inspiration for the “eureka” moment. Here is my list that can help you with your projects.

 

1 Ankava

Ankava allows you to select a city and then draws every single road on a screen. It uses the OpenStreetMap data to create your map. You can customize your background and road network colors and export as a png file. You may print out your favorite city maps and decorate your home or office walls.

 

 

2 Dual Maps

Google Earth is great, we can not imagine a life without having it. Thanks to mapchannel’s work Dual Maps, you can combine the views of Map, Sattelite View and Street View simultaneously. By the way, I recommend Netflix’s “The Billion Dollar Code” show if you are interested in the origin of the Google Earth.

 

 

3 Mapillary

As I mentioned before, Google Earth is great. But sometimes you may not have a Street View for a spesific location or they might not be the updated versions. Mapillary can be an alternative for this case. They gather the videos from the users who has on-board cameras on their vehicles and put them on a map so it’s the same way of using Google Street View.

 

4 kepler.gl

When it comes to data visualization on a map, kepler.gl is an advanced tool. You can import your data sets and use the visualization and filtering features and get fascinating outputs. It is also possible to use kepler.gl’s demo datasets to get knowledge about use cases.

 

5 The Way To Go

When we consider how Dutch cities encourage the active travel modes in a sustainable way, getting some inspiration from Dutch design would be worthwhile when you redesign your urban streets. Humankind’s The Way To Go app helps you to find cool street designs from the Netherlands. Plus, you can filter the street width and opt out some of the street features like bike lanes, car parking, greenery and commercial places in the street.

 

 

6 Streetmix

After you get some inspiration from Dutch streets, it’s time to design your own one. And here’s a fantastic tool for you to sketch and share your ideas: Streetmix. It contains multiple street objects to design multi-modal transportation environment. You can easily show what can be done to have people-oriented streets.

 

 

7 Roundabouts Database

Roundabouts are cool. If you want to explore the roundabouts, traffic calming circles and rotaries worldwide, check out Kittleson’s Roundabout Database. If you have designed a roundabout and couldn’t find it on the list, you can mark yours.

8 Turborotondes

If you are into roundabouts, you probably know the Turbo Roundabouts. Turborotondes is website dedicated to Turbo Roundabouts, it’s like a wikipedia just for Turbo Roundabouts. The only thing is that website language is Dutch, so you may need to use Google Translate 🙂

 

9 Microsimulation of Traffic Flow

If you are a professional, you already have been a user of a simulation software and created advanced models. This online simple tool have some basic templates for scenarios like ramp metering, roundabout, temporary lane closure at a highway etc. Parameters are modifiable by user and you can observe the effects while you are changing the values of parameters.

 

 

10 Wiedemann 99 Explained

If you ever used PTV Vissim simulation software, you already know the Wiedemann Car Following Model. Guanghui Liu’s this tool helps you to understand the model parameters by creating live graphs.