Transportation planning

Learning objectives

• Explain what metropolitan planning organizations do and the plans and programs they produce.
• Describe functional classification and the tradeoff between mobility and access.
• Put the four steps of the conventional travel demand model in order and explain each one.
• Compare level of service and vehicle miles traveled as measures, and explain induced demand.
• Apply complete streets, road diets, Vision Zero, transit-oriented development, and travel demand management.
• Explain the basics of transit service planning, parking policy, and access management.

Key concepts

Who plans transportation

• State departments of transportation (DOTs) plan, build, and maintain state highways and distribute federal funds. Each state prepares a long-range statewide plan and a Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP).
• Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are federally required for every urbanized area with a population of at least 50,000. They carry out the "continuing, comprehensive, and cooperative" (3C) regional planning process: continuing because plans are kept current, comprehensive because they cover every mode and its links to land use, and cooperative because the state, local governments, and transit operators plan together. An MPO's board typically includes local elected officials, the state DOT, and transit operators. An MPO whose urbanized area tops 200,000 people is also a transportation management area (TMA): it must run a congestion management process and is reviewed and certified by the federal government at least every four years.
• Transit agencies plan and run bus and rail service.
• Local governments plan and manage local streets, sidewalks, parking, and land use.

Federal surface transportation law sets the rules all of them work under, and three landmarks explain most of today's system. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962 made the 3C process a condition of federal highway money in urban areas of 50,000 or more, which is where the MPO threshold comes from. ISTEA (1991) gave MPOs real authority and let regions "flex" highway funds to transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects. MAP-21 (2012) made planning performance-based: states and MPOs set targets for measures such as traffic deaths and serious injuries, pavement and bridge condition, and travel time reliability, and report their progress. The current law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), was written to run through September 2026; Congress extended it short term while it debated a successor, so check which programs are still funded before you cite one. Federal policy and planning puts all the acts in order.

12 more sections follow in the full lesson.