Title: ISTEA: SOME PERSPECTIVES ON WHETHER IT WILL NECESSARILY LEAD TO BETTER TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
Abstract: The purpose of this research is to analyze whether the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) will by itself necessarily lead to better transportation planning, using transportation planning in the Greater Boston area in both the pre-ISTEA era and the post-ISTEA era as a case in point. It was found that the traditional weaknesses of transportation planning, that is, lack of integration with land use planning, lag in response time to changing conditions and the lack of integrated multimodal planning persisted in the post-ISTEA planning process. The research shows that many of the elements that were considered new in ISTEA such as flexible funding from highway to transit and devolving of decision-making power from the federal agencies to the States and the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) were in fact practiced in the Greater Boston area in the pre-ISTEA era. Thus their inclusion in ISTEA will not a priori correct the weaknesses identified earlier. Even the requirement for Congestion Management Systems (CMS) has its antecedents in the Transportation Systems Management (TSM) initiative of 1975. The research shows that in the Greater Boston region, TSM failed to achieve its stated objectives of reducing vehicle-miles traveled and increasing transit modal share. The factors that caused the failure of the TSM initiative still have the potential to degrade the effectiveness and objectives of the CMS. It is felt that one of the causes of the persistence of the traditional weaknesses lies in the fact that the analytical techniques used in transportation planning developed in the pre-ISTEA era of mode-specific funding are still being used. This results in the modal operating agencies having the dominating influence in transportation planning although legally the MPO should be the dominating influence. The research recommends the development of user-based performance standards, transportation service standards and scenario-based planning to correct the weaknesses identified.
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot