Book excerpt: This book covers a selection of fundamental topics of traffic engineering useful for highways facilities design and control. The treatment is concise but it does not neglect to examine the most recent and crucial theoretical aspects which are at the root of numerous highway engineering applications, like, for instance, the essential aspects of highways traffic stream reliability calculation and automated highway systems control. In order to make these topics easy to follow, several illustrative worked examples of applications are provided in great detail. An intuitive and discursive, rather than formal, style has been adopted throughout the contents. As such, the book offers up-to-date and practical knowledge on several aspects of traffic engineering, which is of interest to a wide audience including students, researchers as well as transportation planners, public transport specialists, city planners and decision-makers.