Metropolitan Transportation Planning: Lessons From the Past, Institutions for the Future

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and fi ndings: There are more than 400 U.S. metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) overseeing multiple transportation projects totaling billions of dollars, yet these crucial organizations and their history and current role are generally unknown or confusing to many planning practitioners and scholars. MPOs face major challenges in developing meaningful long-range regional transportation plans, challenges rooted in their history that planners should understand as they grapple with metropolitan planning efforts. MPOs may approve projects and their funding, but disparate agencies and often competitive local governments control budgets and actually build projects. MPOs, moreover, do not fully represent all regional interests and have no control over the local land use decisions that would support less autocentric communities and human-powered modes. I provide a metareview of the history of regional transportation planning and the MPOs responsible for it, describing U.S. metropolitan transportation planning from the early 20th century. Federal legislation in the 1960s fi rst suggested a regional forum for conversations about metropolitan transportation. Federal legislation in subsequent decades made incremental if incomplete progress toward creating a meaningful regional forum, adapting institutions and practices to increase stakeholder involvement as well as the scope of transport planning, yet MPOs have multiple limitations that planners can address. Takeaway for practice: History suggests that MPOs can be a force for regional change. Planners and policymakers could anchor future reforms to MPOs' existing legal and administrative frameworks. Planners should revisit the membership and voting structures Metropolitan Transportation Planning Lessons From the Past, Institutions for the Future Gian-Claudia Sciara of MPO boards to ensure better stakeholder representation and permit some MPOs to generate and direct transportation funds at the local level.

What Determines Where Public Investment Goes? Regional Governance and the Role of Institutional Rules and Power

“…Along this line, many have started looking at the role that regional coalitions and governments can play to reduce the disparities across metropolitan communities (Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2004; Orfield 2011; Rusk 1993). Most work on regional institutions has focused on whether they can facilitate coordination and regionalism (Gerber and Loh 2011; Kwon, Feiock, and Bae 2014; Kwon and Park 2014; Sciara 2017). Some scholars even suggest that existing regional bodies should be granted more authority above their current control on transportation polices to scale up their influence in such other areas as land use and affordable housing for equitable development in metropolitan areas (Orfield 2011; cf.…”

Who Decides? Toward a Typology of Transit Governance

“…Much of the debate about transport governance in the U.S. context has centered on regional decision making and the work of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs). Sciara [19] provides an organizational history of MPOs since their creation by federal legislation in the 1960s while Sciara and Wachs [20] identify various MPO financing strategies and discuss how organizational models may influence outcomes. Weinreich investigates the challenges of using local option transportation taxes [21] in a regional context [22,23] identifying how formal organizational arrangements influence local financing outcomes.…”

Socio- Economic Development of Transportation in Fufore, Nigeria

“…In the current global economy, the ability of transportation sector to catalyze the process of economic growth and development requires to be examined in greater detail [15]. In recognition of the recent world-wide investment in transportation, quantifying the impact of transportation in economic growth and development continue to attract greater focus [15].…”