TRANSPORTATION PLANNING IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

The continuing evolution of the socioeconomic, physical and political environment for transportation planning appears to have outpaced our ability to devise a planning process. In city after city, the plans and programs of the late 1960s and early 1970s are being questioned because of their failure to anticipate changes in public values. Transportation planning can now be defined as a process of guiding the staged improvements of the metropolitan transport function in a manner that is responsive to cost, system development, impact constraints and improvement objectives. To be continuously portrayed are: (1) the existing transport system; (2) committed transportation improvement program; (3) unresolved transportation problems; (4) unforeclosed transportation opportunities. These should provide a more realistic basis for decisions on transportation in metropolitan areas.