Explore jobs
Find specific jobs
Explore careers
Explore professions
Best companies
Explore companies
The differences between transportation engineers and traffic engineers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. Additionally, a traffic engineer has an average salary of $87,079, which is higher than the $68,945 average annual salary of a transportation engineer.
The top three skills for a transportation engineer include autocad, cost estimates and project management. The most important skills for a traffic engineer are HCS, traffic operations, and signal timing.
| Transportation Engineer | Traffic Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $68,945 | $87,079 |
| Hourly rate | $33.15 | $41.86 |
| Growth rate | 7% | 7% |
| Number of jobs | 20,388 | 5,561 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 69% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Average age | 41 | 41 |
| Years of experience | - | - |
Transportation engineers are also known as civil engineers who are responsible for planning, designing, and operating roadway construction and maintenance and modifications of existing streets, highways, or freeways to improve traffic flow for the safety and efficiency of transportation systems. Such a job requires knowledge and skills in transportation and traffic management systems technology and applications to be able to plan, design, develop, and maintain traffic systems and processes including traffic lights more efficiently and effectively.
The Traffic Engineer is responsible for the design of roadways that provide free traffic flow. In city planning, congested roads are one of the crucial problems that need solving. The Traffic Engineer works with various agencies to gather information to develop and design a customized road network that will decongest roads and prevent bottlenecks. Traffic Engineers are essential personnel, even in building suburban subdivisions and housing projects. A Traffic Engineer's tasks are to conduct assessments of existing road networks and provide suggestions for improving traffic flow and recommend design modifications and alterations
Transportation engineers and traffic engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Transportation Engineer | Traffic Engineer | |
| Average salary | $68,945 | $87,079 |
| Salary range | Between $51,000 And $91,000 | Between $54,000 And $138,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Los Angeles, CA |
| Highest paying state | California | California |
| Best paying company | Apple | |
| Best paying industry | Government | Retail |
There are a few differences between a transportation engineer and a traffic engineer in terms of educational background:
| Transportation Engineer | Traffic Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 69% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Most common major | Civil Engineering | Civil Engineering |
| Most common college | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | University of Southern California |
Here are the differences between transportation engineers' and traffic engineers' demographics:
| Transportation Engineer | Traffic Engineer | |
| Average age | 41 | 41 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 80.6% Female, 19.4% | Male, 81.2% Female, 18.8% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 3.8% Unknown, 4.6% Hispanic or Latino, 11.2% Asian, 15.7% White, 64.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% | Black or African American, 3.9% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 11.6% Asian, 14.6% White, 64.9% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% |
| LGBT Percentage | 5% | 5% |