pating annual program needs for several years ahead, but possibly another approach to developing long-range plans—a synthesis approach—and with cooperation from the Bureau of Public Roads explored the area with some success. One of the early applications of this approach was made by the New York Thruway Authority in estimating its long-range major maintenance and replacement programs.
By various approaches individual States were successful in developing and keeping reasonably current long-range plans and, to a less satisfactory degree, medium and short-range programs, generally based on objective planning processes. States probably were then and now are better able than the national government to develop transportation policies objectively.
Increasingly States are gearing their transportation policies and plans to general land use development policies. Connecticut and Wisconsin offer early examples of transportation considerations as a key element in implementing desirable land use policies, with the highway departments, and more recently in some cases transportation departments, joining with other State departments in developing the long-range goals and policies. Wisconsin also offers an early example of forecasting transportation needs by a sophisticated simulation model developed as an outgrowth of the urban transportation models expanded to statewide scope. Illinois was another State entering early into the use of statewide simulation models. Increasingly States are coming to accept the futility of attempting any longer to develop a highway policy in isolation from other modes of transportation, or to develop a transportation policy except as an integral element of an overall land use development policy, a view the Congress has yet to accept.
At the beginning of this chapter, the question was raised as to whether in the United States any highway planning was carried on or whether what is called highway planning more realistically is highway improvement planning. Alaska was cited as an exception. It so happened that an opportunity to illustrate this distinction came with the Alaska Highway Study.
In the early 1930’s, engineers planned to make the St. Croix River a part of a proposed Lake Superior-Mississippi River canal. However, in 1968 Congress made the Upper St. Croix part of the national system of wild and scenic rivers. Later the Wisconsin Division of Highways developed a wayside and canoe landing along State highway 35 and negotiated scenic easements to assure that a 200-foot strip along the river and the highway will remain in its natural state.
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