a zone was industrial, but what kind of industry was there, for a shoe factory would produce far different numbers of trips than a steel mill, for example. And in residential zones income levels were important because they were a factor in numbers of trips and choice of modes. This in turn induced the highway departments and interested cooperating cities to bring into the planning process, up until then carried on largely by engineers, professionals from other disciplines—such as planning, geography, mathematics, and sociology—better equipped by training to deal with the factors of urban growth, to which transportation facilities must be related.
This tremendous breakthrough in planning, a development which put land use and general planning as well as transportation planning on a quantitative basis, can be attributed to three factors, each essential—the introduction of the computer, the availability of resources never before within reach of planners, and the bringing into the planning process, in many cases with responsibility for the direction of the work, of professionals from other than the engineering discipline. But these factors themselves would not have produced the result had it not been for strong urging of the Public Roads Administration and the technical advances developed by its staff and the willingness of many of the State highway departments and interested cities to participate in this major pioneering effort. And it also required a liberal interpretation of what is a highway purpose, for the use of highway funds both at Federal and State level are restricted by law to expenditures for highway purposes. Highway officials had one ally, however, and a strong one, in the Bureau of the Budget, which informally urged leaning as far as possible in the financing of land use and general planning. The logic, of course, is that one can hardly produce a transportation plan without a land use plan reflecting the form of city or region the local citizens will probably have if not necessarily what they desire, and it was on this basis that highway officials, sometimes with justifiable concern as to its legality, agreed to finance considerably more than what might be narrowly construed as highway planning. In plain fact, land use from the beginning of the modern planning process, has been accepted as the base from which urban transportation planning must start. And perhaps more recently but no less strongly accepted is the fact that transportation can be an important factor in determining land use. The two are interrelated.
In the matter of financing of the land use portion of the process, tribute must be paid to the Housing, and Home Finance Agency (HHFA) and its officials which, as the “701” planning assistance funds became available, joined in the effort as full partners at the Federal level. The cordial and effective cooperation of the staffs of HHFA and the Public Roads Administration and the direction of much of the 701 money to the cooperative (sometimes called hyphenated) land use-transportation planning process must rank well up with the highway contribution in the success of the process.
While highway departments were placing major emphasis on planning arterial routes in urban areas, city street congestion was steadily worsening. Arterial highway improvements even though planned were not appearing because of lack of funds, and it became increasingly obvious that even when built they would still leave heavy congestion on city streets, particularly in the downtown areas. The fact that the highway departments’ efforts seemed to be resulting in plans but not programs was leading to expressions of quite divergent philosophies. Many city officials, particularly traffic engineers and public works directors, began urging de-emphasis on freeways and concentration on traffic engineering type of improvements and minor construction programs as an immediate aid to lessening congestion. Highway officials, at least in some cases, held the view that such localized improvements were stopgap at best, and that urban officials should give greater attention to getting on with what the highway officials saw as the essential long-range improvements. It was in this atmosphere that the National Committee on Urban Transportation (NCUT) was created in 1954, initiated and sponsored by the Automotive Safety Foundation. Its purpose was “to help cities do a better job of transportation planning through systematic collection and analysis of basic facts . . . [to] afford the public the best possible transportation service at the least possible cost . . . and . . . aid in accomplishing desirable goals of urban renewal and sound suburban growth.”[1]
The list of organizations which formally named representatives to constitute the National Committee is impressive in its inclusion of virtually every association concerned with transportation in the urban area. The list is as follows:
- The American Municipal Association
- The American Public Works Association
- The International City Managers’ Association
- The National Institute of Municipal Law Officers
- The American Society of Planning Officials
- The Municipal Finance Officers Association
- The Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities
- The National Association of County Officials
- The Bureau of Public Roads
Among the consultants to the Committee were Ralph Bartelsmeyer, then Chief Highway Engineer of Illinois, who represented the American Association of State Highway Officials, and George Anderson, Vice President of the American Transit Association. Ben West, Mayor of Nashville was the first chairman of the Committee, later succeeded by Glenn Richards, Commissioner of Public Works of Detroit.
The assembly of this Committee not only exemplified the ability of the Foundation to marshall resources to bear on a specific problem, but also marked the beginning of the cooperative approach to urban transportation problems.
The Committee enlisted a great many experts in various areas of urban transportation to prepare a series of technical manuals covering all phases of data collection and processing, as well as recommendations for developing the plan, carrying out the plan and improving transportation administration. A count of the members of the subcommittees and their consultants and advisors adds up to 142, all recognized experts or leaders in their respective fields. It was an unparalleled volunteer effort, from 1954 through to the publication of the book Better Trans-
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- ↑ National Committee on Urban Transportation, Better Transportation for Your City (Public Administration Service, 1958) p. XI.
