Practice questions mapped to all 10 knowledge areas on the NCEES PE Civil Transportation depth exam. Figure-based questions with worked explanations covering traffic engineering, geometric design, signals, pavement, and drainage.
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A signalized intersection approach has a saturation flow rate of 1,800 veh/h/lane, a green ratio (g/C) of 0.45, and a volume of 600 veh/h in a single lane. The volume-to-capacity (v/c) ratio for this approach is most nearly:
A horizontal curve on a two-lane highway has a radius of 300 m and a design speed of 80 km/h. Using a maximum superelevation rate of 8%, the minimum required side friction factor per AASHTO is most nearly:
A stopping sight distance calculation assumes a perception-reaction time of 2.5 seconds and a deceleration rate of 3.4 m/s². For a design speed of 100 km/h, the stopping sight distance is most nearly:
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Continue practicing for freePE Civil — Transportation is a CBT exam of 80 questions over 9h appointment (8h exam time).
10 practice areas in the PE Civil: Transportation question bank, each with its own questions and analytics.
Every question in the bank is written in one of these formats.
The PE Civil: Transportation exam is the NCEES licensing exam for engineers who design roadways, intersections, signals, and pavements or who work in traffic operations and safety. It is computer-based and offered year-round at Pearson VUE test centers, and it is the last exam on the path that begins with the FE. Since April 2024 it has been a discipline-specific exam. NCEES retired the breadth section that used to be shared across the civil disciplines, and every one of the 80 questions now comes from the Transportation specification.
That change makes the exam narrower and deeper. Horizontal and vertical alignment, sight distance, intersection geometry, capacity and level of service, signal timing, traffic control, pavement structural design, and roadway drainage carry the exam, while project management and geotechnical questions are asked as a roadway engineer meets them, like a construction staging plan or a subgrade under a pavement section. The practice bank on this page follows the specification area by area, and most questions carry the plan sheet or volume table you would be handed on exam day, because the real exam is figure-heavy.
Source: NCEES PE Civil: Transportation exam specifications (effective April 2024)
| Knowledge area | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Project Management | Quantity take-off, cost estimating, project schedules and critical-path analysis, activity sequencing, construction staging and phasing. |
| Traffic Engineering | Traffic volume and demand, capacity and level of service by the Highway Capacity Manual, speed and queuing studies, travel-time analysis, crash analysis and countermeasures using the Highway Safety Manual. |
| Roadside and Cross-Section Design | Lane and shoulder width, cross slope, clear zones, barriers and end treatments per the AASHTO Roadside Design Guide, medians, curbs, and pedestrian and bicycle accommodation. |
| Horizontal Design | Horizontal curve geometry, superelevation and transition lengths, spiral curves, curve widening, and sight distance around curves. |
| Vertical Design | Crest and sag vertical curves, grades and grade breaks, sight distance for stopping and passing, vertical clearance, headlight sight distance. |
| Intersection Geometry | Intersection sight distance, design vehicles with their turning templates and radii, auxiliary and turn lanes, channelization, roundabout geometry. |
| Traffic Signals | Signal warrants and phasing, cycle length and splits, clearance and change intervals, pedestrian timing, coordination and offsets. |
| Traffic Control Design | Signs and markings per the MUTCD, temporary traffic control and work-zone layout, sign placement and spacing. |
| Geotechnical and Pavement | Subgrade characterization and soil classification, traffic loading and equivalent single-axle loads, flexible and rigid pavement structural design, pavement materials. |
| Drainage | Roadway hydrology, inlet spacing and capacity, storm-drain and culvert sizing, roadside ditches and open channels, erosion and sediment control. |
NCEES lists the number of questions it draws from each knowledge area in the current specification PDF. Check ncees.org for the exact allocation on your form. There is no separate breadth section. Everything above is scored as one 80-question exam, and the project management and geotechnical questions are set in a roadway context instead of a general civil review.
The Transportation exam is reported as pass or fail. NCEES sets the cut score for each form through a standard-setting study by licensed transportation engineers and converts your raw score to a scaled result. It does not publish a passing percentage, so the number of correct answers required can differ slightly between forms. Results reach your MyNCEES account, usually within 7 to 10 days, and go to the board you registered with. Failing results include a diagnostic report by knowledge area.
Expect alternative item types alongside four-option multiple choice: multiple-correct selections, point-and-click on a plan or profile, drag-and-drop, and numeric fill-in-the-blank. Transportation questions are frequently built around a figure or a table of volumes, so pulling the correct station or movement out of the figure matters as much as the formula. Wrong answers carry no penalty, and 8 hours for 80 questions leaves an average of 6 minutes each.
NCEES does not recommend a study time. Working engineers commonly target 200 to 300 hours. The 12-week plan below fits that into 15 to 20 hours a week and opens with geometric design, the most formula-driven part of the specification.
Transportation questions are written backwards from the answer key. Each distractor is the result of one specific mistake the item writer expects: stopping sight distance computed with the passing-sight-distance formula, a curve designed to the posted speed instead of the design speed, a level of service read one row off in the HCM threshold table, a crest curve length taken from the sag equation, a station read from the wrong side of the PI. PassExams explains, on every question and every tier, why the option you picked looked right. On Pro, each wrong option also carries a trap-type label (reading trick, formula swap, scope confusion, off-by-one, partial solution), so you can see whether you misread the figure or misapplied the criterion.
Those labels accumulate into a profile of how you lose points. Seeing that Vertical Design costs you mostly formula swaps while Traffic Engineering costs you reading tricks tells you what to practise next in a way that a single percent-correct never can. When you miss a question, the variant engine rebuilds it with a new design speed or a new volume table, so the second attempt tests the method and not your memory, and hints strip away the most tempting distractor first. Learn the criteria and the reasons behind them and the exam-day numbers stop mattering. Memorize answers and they become the trap.
Work from the current NCEES specification, because April 2024 made this a discipline-specific exam in which all 80 questions come from Transportation alone, and many candidates plan 200 to 300 hours that open with geometric design. Practise inside the supplied PDFs of the Green Book, the Roadside Design Guide, the Highway Capacity Manual, and the MUTCD, since nothing printed comes into the room with you. Read every figure twice and design to the design speed and never to the posted speed. At roughly six minutes a question, no answer should be left blank.
80 questions in a single computer-based appointment, delivered in two sections with one scheduled break. Since April 2024 every question comes from the Transportation specification. The breadth section once shared with the other civil disciplines no longer exists.
Yes. In April 2024 NCEES replaced the breadth-plus-depth structure with five separate discipline-specific exams (Construction, Geotechnical, Structural, Transportation, and Water Resources and Environmental), each with its own 80-question specification. Study material written for the old format covers topics this exam no longer tests.
The appointment is 9 hours: a 2-minute nondisclosure agreement, an 8-minute tutorial, 8 hours of exam time, and a 50-minute scheduled break, which works out to about six minutes per question.
The specification lists the AASHTO Green Book, Roadside Design Guide, Highway Safety Manual, pedestrian facilities guide, Guide for Design of Pavement Structures, and Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide, along with the Highway Capacity Manual, the MUTCD, and FHWA Hydraulic Design Series 5, in named editions. NCEES supplies them on screen as searchable PDFs alongside the PE Civil Reference Handbook. Confirm the current list on ncees.org.
You cannot bring anything in, but you are not working from memory either. The NCEES PE Civil Reference Handbook and the design standards listed in the Transportation specification are supplied on screen as searchable PDFs. The skill is knowing where a value lives in the Green Book or the HCM before exam day.
NCEES does not publish a passing percentage. The exam is scored pass/fail on a scaled basis with a cut score set by a standard-setting panel, so it can differ slightly between forms. Consistent accuracy above 70% on realistic timed practice is a reasonable working target.
There is no official figure. Many candidates plan for 200 to 300 hours over three to four months. Engineers who do geometric design or traffic operations daily sit at the lower end. Those several years away from pavement or drainage topics should plan for the upper end.
Yes. NCEES allows one attempt per quarterly testing window and up to three attempts in any 12-month period, and your diagnostic report shows performance by knowledge area. Some state boards add their own limits, so confirm with your board before re-registering.
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