<p>I am thinking about becoming a transportation engineer but I hear that the salaries are higher for chemical and electrical engineers. Is there potential for salaries to rise for a civil engineer after getting a PE licence? </p>
<p>Also, is there much of a job market for transportation engineers or is civil engineering mostly for structural engineers?</p>
<p>Yes, there is plenty of work for transportation engineers. Yes, your salary probably will rise after getting a PE license. In fact, if you don't get the PE, your career may be quite limited.</p>
<p>Average salaries for transportation engineers probably are lower than those for chemical or electrical engineers. However, salary alone does not capture the whole picture. Consider the following points:</p>
<p>(1) Many, if not most, transportation engineers work in the public sector, for state highway departments or local road departments. Public sector salaries are usually lower than those in the private sector (where the vast majority of ChEs and EEs work). But the public sector usually provides better benefits. </p>
<p>(2) Transportation engineers can find work virtually anywhere, from the biggest cities to the most remote rural areas. ChEs and EEs tend to be concentrated in big cities or the surrounding suburbs. This geographic pattern reduces the average salary for transportation engineers, because salaries tend to be lower in outlying areas. But housing costs, and other costs of living, are typically lower as well.</p>
<p>A transportation engineer working for a small-town roads department would likely have a significantly lower salary than an EE or ChE living in a big urban area. Yet the transportation engineer could be the one with the biggest house and the sweetest retirement plan. Salary is the easiest point of comparison, but there are other things to consider.</p>
<p>If you go into civil engineering, getting those two little initials, PE, can make a world of difference. Without, you can't sign off on drawings, and thus you can't make it into management. It makes less of a difference for ChE's and EE's; many of them don't have PE's. </p>
<p>Average salaries for transportation engineers are lower than most of the other branches of civil engineering.</p>
<p>In transportation engineering, there's design (as in roadways and such), and there's traffic analysis. The former you can find work virtually anywhere, but if you want to do traffic analysis (which is somewhat related to urban planning), you're limited to large cities usually because that's where all the work is. Traffic is rarely a problem in the more rural areas.</p>