The Development of Highway Planning

HIGHWAY AND URBAN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

The Development of Highway Planning:

            In the United States before 1930, the primary attention of highway agencies was focused on establishing a system of all-weather rural roads. With this objective there seemed to be little need for “planning” the problem was to get the roads built.

            About 1930 the attitude toward planning began to change. City streets were in relative distress, and many rural highways were overloaded. The practice of using all federal aid and the bulk of state highway funds for the improvement of main rural highways needed examination. And yet what were the next most important groups of roads or streets? Should their improvement supersede the demand for reconstruction of much of the main system that was rapidly becoming inadequate for increased traffic?

            From the data at hand such questions were unanswerable. To get facts on which to base decision, the so-called “highway planning surveys” were under taken. Beginning with the Federal-Aid Act of 1934, Congress authorized expenditures not to exceed 1 ½ % of federal-aid funds apportioned to each state for the making of surveys, plans, and engineering investigations of projects for future construction. In addition, the usual “matching” provision was waived. By 1940, all the state highway departments were assembling the facts necessary to develop long range highway- improvement programs.

            Today, planning has become a basic activity of every major highway or transportation agency. Data assembled by the planning departments are used to develop programs for the years ahead, and in almost administrative decisions. New planning procedures are under continuous development; in many of these activities, scientific applications such as special instruments, statistical methods, and computer analysis are replacing the cumbersome and time consuming hand-labour methods of earlier days. But in spite of developments such as these, the planning premises and approaches of highway agencies and the proposals for highway improvements stemming from them are being challenged on many fronts. As a result, some projects, particularly urban freeways, are not being constructed at all and others have been substantially delayed. For example: a 1971 study by the Texas Highway Department indicated that an average of 8 years and 5 mo elapsed between authorization to proceed with a project and its opening to traffic, and even longer lead times are anticipated when the environmental impact statements called for by the Environmental protection Act are required.

The Planning Dilemma:    

            As indicated in Chapter 1, the United States is, for better or worse, tightly bound to the motor vehicle. Until the early or middle 1960s, the attitude of the public and their elected representatives toward highways, and particularly freeways, was highly favorable. Even today, such attitudes generally prevail toward highway investments in rural areas, although some critics blame the automobile for such problems as the removal of land from productive use, its failure or that of alternative transportation schemes to provide for the movement of rural residents, particularly the poor, and the overcrowding and despoiling of recreational and scenic areas. But a possibly large segment of the population and many social scientists and politicians charge the motor vehicle and the freeways and streets that serve it with primary responsibility for such urban problems as air and noise pollution, urban sprawl, displacement of the poor and minorities from their homes, and the detoriation of the central city and close-in residential areas. Thus, where a few years ago highway agencies proceeded with their urban programs with little interference and with a feeling of certainty, they now operate in an atmosphere of confusion, uncertainty and distrust. This situation is not peculiar to transportation, for agencies charged with other public responsibilities also are being subjected to strong criticism.