Home » transportation planning » Transportation Engineering The Planning Dilemma

Transportation Engineering The Planning Dilemma

Posted by aditya | 8:57 PM | | 1 comments »

The  United States is, with a few exceptions, committed to highway travel for some years to come. Until the late 1960s, the attitudes of the public and their elected representatives toward the private automobile and highways, particularly freeways, was highly favorable. Probably such attitudes generally still prevail toward highways serving rural areas, although some critics blame the automobile for such problems as the removal of land from productive use, the failure of it or alternative transportation schemes to provide for the movement of rural residents, particularly the disadvantaged, and the overcrowding and despoiling of recreational and scenic areas. The urban scene is different. A segment of the population of unknown size and many planners, social scientists, and politicians charge the motor vehicle and the freeways and streets that serve it with primary responsibility for such problems as air and noise pollution, urban sprawl, displacement of the poor and minorities from their homes, and the deterioration of the central city and close-in residential areas. More recently, a major share of the blame for the shortage and high cost of motor fuel is attributed to them. Thus, where in the 1960s agencies proceeded with their urban highway programs with little interference and with a feeling of certainty, now major freeway and highway programs are largely a thing of the past.

Many reasons can be offered for these possible changes in attitude toward the motor vehicle and for the uncertainties that result. A few of them are:
1. Urban problems have been greatly intensified by such predicaments as:
a. The movement of rural populations to urban areas, with many of the minorities and disadvantaged trapped in the deteriorated areas surrounding central business districts.
b. The flight of the more affluent, and services for them, to new communities in the suburbs, leaving the cities with acute problems and lower revenues with which to handle them.
c. Economic forces, including land prices, transportation costs, and many govern-mentaloolicies that have favored dispersal.
d. Governments have been relatively ineffective in dealing with these and other complex urban problems. Authority has been divided among many agencies at several levels. Furthermore, inept approaches, long delays, or inadequate financing of some projects has tended to discredit all such efforts.
2. Arguments about urban development, including use of motor vehicles and other environmental and conservation issues, have offered a highly visible means for expressing public frustrations with the many urban problems. Under such circumstances, effective political action is difficult.

3. Proposed actions are delayed or prohibited because laws with conflicting purposes and the procedures set up to carry them out, along with challenges in the courts, result in long lead times or in no action at all.
4. As discussed in more detail below, transportation is but one of many problems for which solutions are being sought, and sub optimizing to produce better transportation services, as transportation planners have often done in the past, is not feasible today.
5. Rational planning is out! No longer is planning an objective process based on complex computer-based analyses free of the emotional concerns of citizens. Rather, in a democratic society, decisions finally are made in the political arena.5
6. Unquestionably, the public has lost confidence not only in government's ability to solve problems but also in the technical professional. Neither do professionals have confidence in themselves nor in the solutions they offer.
In sum, it must be concluded that planners today must operate in a world of rapid change where there are few guideposts and in the political arena where "decisions by oracles" may carry equal weight with those of professionals.


Title Post: Transportation Engineering The Planning Dilemma
Rating: 100% based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
Author: aditya