LAND USE AND TRANSPORTATION PLANNING IN RESPONSE TO CONGESTION PROBLEMS: A REVIEW AND CRITIQUE

Concerns over traffic congestion are producing an upsurge of interest in coordinating land development and transportation. This paper reviews land use and transportation planning at the local government level and assesses planning and policy issues raised by various strategies being utilized to address congestion problems. At the local level transportation and land use planning often are carried out as largely separate functions. This separation reflects differences in education and training of the planners responsible for land use and the engineers responsible for transportation and occurs in part because many transportation facilities and services are provided by state and regional rather than local agencies. One result is that transportation and land use plans are rarely coordinated and often are inconsistent. Such inconsistencies were less of a concern in the past, when the tradition of providing transportation services on demand lessened the need for detailed plan coordination. Today, however, shrinking revenues, escalating costs, and concerns about social and environmental impacts have combined to constrain state highway building; financial problems and difficulties in attracting riders have deterred transit expansion. Consequently, it is no longer possible to rely on state and regional transportation agencies to build a way out of congestion problems, and local governments are having to shoulder greater responsibility for transportation.