Certification 📜 Professional Transportation Planner (PTP) Certification Exam

[Doberman]

I had been meaning to touch on this for those interested. I took the PTP earlier this year. The certification is offered and maintained through the International Transportation Engineers and I believe the Transportation Professionals Certification Board. I'm not exactly sure what the relationship is between the two.

I submitted my application exam back when I was Director of Transportation Planning & Development for our county's transit agency. I have since moved on to work in Economic Development. Prior to that role, I was working in urban planning. My employer at the time paid for my application and exam fee. Similar to the AICP, the required years of work experience are based on your education. I believe that your time working in urban planning can count toward the years you need.

The exam itself was 300 questions and broken into two 150 question blocks. I believe you had something like 4 hours to finish the exam with a one-hour break in between.

As you can imagine, the exam was all over the place.

Their website (https://www.tpcb.org/certification/ptp/reference-material/ (Reference Material)) lists several books as reference materials for the exam. Buying all of these books would probably cost you thousands of dollars and time wasted. Of the reference materials, I recommend the Transportation Planning Handbook, Engaging People through Outreach and Organization. Public Involvement Techniques for Transportation Decision Making, all of the TCRP reports they recommend, Transportation Impact Analysis for Site Development, Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities, Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines, and The Geography of Urban Transportation. I also read through Urban Travel Demand Modeling, I would do this just for the concepts, you won't have to solve these types of complicated math problems on the exam. I did not read Parking Generation and I have a feeling I missed a good bit of those questions. If you aren't familiar with transit beyond a surface-level understanding, you may also want to read TCRP 100.

There were also a few questions related to project management that looked like they belonged in a PMP exam. Also, some questions related to GIS concepts.

I do not recommend purchasing the practice exams or the refresher course. These are fairly expensive and did not help me in the least.

While there is some math in the exam, it's not an engineering exam. Most of the math I saw looked like it was stats and Algebra 2 at the most. There were a few off-the-wall questions that asked you to calculate the useful life cycle in dollars for a bridge using linear regression, I just guessed on this one and moved on.

Since I've moved from Transportation Planning to Econ. Dev., I can't say that it's helped my career a ton in that regard. It is nice having some letters behind your name even if you have to explain to people what they mean. I do think the course material can help you be a little more technical in what you do and what you know. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues in the econ. dev. field are not very technical and more interested in , going to trade shows and taking pictures with golden shovels. While I would not pretend to have the same skillset as an engineer does, I do think I'm able to have better and more informed conversations about infrastructure with them now.

If you have any questions please let me know.

I am working on the CECD now and hope to take the AICP at some point.

 

[glutton]

I've been wondering about this exam and how it compares in usefulness and content with AICP. Thank you for the thorough review! Super helpful to get a baseline.

In my recent experience, AICP is far more about land use and also a lot more small town and rural focused; it barely touches on transportation content; the few questions on transportation are pretty outdated if you live in a decent sized city (functional classification system, LOS, highway engineering etc.).

Sorry about your colleagues - they sound annoying :/.

 

[Doberman]

I've been wondering about this exam and how it compares in usefulness and content with AICP. Thank you for the thorough review! Super helpful to get a baseline.

In my recent experience, AICP is far more about land use and also a lot more small town and rural focused; it barely touches on transportation content; the few questions on transportation are pretty outdated if you live in a decent sized city (functional classification system, LOS, highway engineering etc.).

Sorry about your colleagues - they sound annoying :/.

I can't speak much to the AICP. I know a lot of people who are AICP and I think you're correct. I believe there is a bigger focus on ethics and history with the AICP exam.

I really enjoyed learning more about traffic impact analysis and travel demand modeling when studying for the exam because I'm a nerd.

 

[Jane Jacobs]

I can't speak much to the AICP. I know a lot of people who are AICP and I think you're correct. I believe there is a bigger focus on ethics and history with the AICP exam.

I really enjoyed learning more about traffic impact analysis and travel demand modeling when studying for the exam because I'm a nerd.

I had been meaning to touch on this for those interested. I took the PTP earlier this year. The certification is offered and maintained through the International Transportation Engineers and I believe the Transportation Professionals Certification Board. I'm not exactly sure what the relationship is between the two.

I submitted my application exam back when I was Director of Transportation Planning & Development for our county's transit agency. I have since moved on to work in Economic Development. Prior to that role, I was working in urban planning. My employer at the time paid for my application and exam fee. Similar to the AICP, the required years of work experience are based on your education. I believe that your time working in urban planning can count toward the years you need.

The exam itself was 300 questions and broken into two 150 question blocks. I believe you had something like 4 hours to finish the exam with a one-hour break in between.

As you can imagine, the exam was all over the place.

Their website (https://www.tpcb.org/certification/ptp/reference-material/ (Reference Material)) lists several books as reference materials for the exam. Buying all of these books would probably cost you thousands of dollars and time wasted. Of the reference materials, I recommend the Transportation Planning Handbook, Engaging People through Outreach and Organization. Public Involvement Techniques for Transportation Decision Making, all of the TCRP reports they recommend, Transportation Impact Analysis for Site Development, Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities, Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines, and The Geography of Urban Transportation. I also read through Urban Travel Demand Modeling, I would do this just for the concepts, you won't have to solve these types of complicated math problems on the exam. I did not read Parking Generation and I have a feeling I missed a good bit of those questions. If you aren't familiar with transit beyond a surface-level understanding, you may also want to read TCRP 100.

There were also a few questions related to project management that looked like they belonged in a PMP exam. Also, some questions related to GIS concepts.

I do not recommend purchasing the practice exams or the refresher course. These are fairly expensive and did not help me in the least.

While there is some math in the exam, it's not an engineering exam. Most of the math I saw looked like it was stats and Algebra 2 at the most. There were a few off-the-wall questions that asked you to calculate the useful life cycle in dollars for a bridge using linear regression, I just guessed on this one and moved on.

Since I've moved from Transportation Planning to Econ. Dev., I can't say that it's helped my career a ton in that regard. It is nice having some letters behind your name even if you have to explain to people what they mean. I do think the course material can help you be a little more technical in what you do and what you know. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues in the econ. dev. field are not very technical and more interested in , going to trade shows and taking pictures with golden shovels. While I would not pretend to have the same skillset as an engineer does, I do think I'm able to have better and more informed conversations about infrastructure with them now.

If you have any questions please let me know.

I am working on the CECD now and hope to take the AICP at some point.

Really appreciate your perspective, as there's a dearth of resources on the PTP on the web! I'm registered for the June 2022 PTP exam. Could you please share your thoughts on the overall difficulty and any special areas to study? How much time and effort did you study beforehand? I do plan on purchasing ITE's refresher course and practice exam, and it's discouraging to hear they may not be helpful resources.

I'm a professional transportation planner at a small southwest MPO, AICP certified. Any thoughts you could provide would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[Doberman]

Really appreciate your perspective, as there's a dearth of resources on the PTP on the web! I'm registered for the June 2022 PTP exam. Could you please share your thoughts on the overall difficulty and any special areas to study? How much time and effort did you study beforehand? I do plan on purchasing ITE's refresher course and practice exam, and it's discouraging to hear they may not be helpful resources.

I'm a professional transportation planner at a small southwest MPO, AICP certified. Any thoughts you could provide would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Thanks for the feedback, Jane.

I think the practice exam has more value than the refresher course if you had to pick between the two. The refresher course was a recording of a webinar geared toward PTPs that needed CEUs. The practice exam was sort of helpful, the three I took did not seem like a good sampling of what I saw on the actual exam.

As you said, resources are scant for the exam. I spent about an hour or two after work just reading through the texts for that very reason. Your background as an AICP should help a good bit. I would read through the books if you have time but focus on the areas you may be weakest at. The Transportation Planning and Handbook and Geography of Urban Transportation books have some overlap and would probably just reinforce one another. If you're short on time I would focus on the Handbook, but definitely read one or the other. I found a PDF of the Handbook online somewhere for about 15 dollars.