SUBURBAN MOBILITY: THE COMING TRANSPORTATION CRISIS?

Changing metropolitan growth patterns have fundamentally altered the nature of the traffic congestion problem. Traffic jams have migrated to the suburbs and now threaten to undermine the very mobility that lured people in the first place out of the crowded cities. However, the looming crisis may contain the seeds of its own solution. Concern about mounting congestion is mobilizing the private sector to join forces with local government in search of new solutions. Emerging from this process is a wealth of creative approaches that offer the best hope yet of finding effective ways to maintain suburban mobility. This paper reviews the subject in terms of suburban megacenters, mature highway system, mass transit, cooperative financing, and other related subjects.