minimizing such effects against the need for fast, safe, and efficient transportation. The guidelines and the State Action Plans are discussed in detail in Chapter 5.
I-95 runs beneath this reflecting pool two blocks west of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Air-right Federal buildings at each end of the tunnel enclose the ventilation equipment. The tunnel concept permitted the new Mall plan to retain this pool and the proposed Ceremonial Drive along its western edge.
Obviously this section of the 1970 Act put public hearings deeply into the planning process. As the Action Plans were being received in the Federal Highway Administration during 1974, the manner in which the States responded to the congressional intent would become apparent.
It has been noted repeatedly in this chapter that most urban transportation planning, and a considerable amount of general urban planning, had been financed with highway funds. It was also noted that prior to the establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban Development the “701” funds that had been heavily directed to aiding the cities in their cooperation with the States, primarily for developing the land use plan, were redirected more toward short-range social goals. When aid to public transportation was initiated by Congress, administration of it was placed in the Urban Transportation Administration then under HUD. No UTA funds were available for the sort of planning carried out under the “3C” process that might be called transportation system planning, although funds could be used for project planning, the type of work called project design in highway terms and which can be financed from construction funds. Projects could not be approved, however, unless they were found to be consistent with an acceptable city or metropolitan plan such as had been largely financed under the “701” funds. This finding, or certification of acceptability, was made within HUD but not within the UTA. Subsequently, when the Department of Transportation was established in 1967 and UMTA was brought in July 1, 1968, project approval became the responsibility of DOT, yet certification of acceptability under the approved city or metropolitan plan still remained in HUD and any lingering hope of “701” fund assistance in system planning disappeared. Responsibility for administering a rapidly and substantially expanding public transportation improvement program fell upon an Administration badly understaffed, with no field organization and no funds for system planning.
To the Federal Highway Administration, it was apparent that the same basic data, the same land use transportation relationships, the same modal-split models applicable to highway planning were either directly applicable or easily adaptable to transit planning. It offered the facilities of the established “3C“ processes in every urbanized area to aid transit system planning and its field offices and its division planning engineers to act as a field arm of UMTA. These efforts met with only mild success, for over the years transit interests had regarded “their mode” as competitive with highways, and starved for Federal aid in comparison with the affluence of the highway mode with what they saw as heavy Federal “subsidies,” particularly the 90–10 Interstate program. Conversion of thinking of modes as competitive rather than as complementary and of administration as antagonistic rather than cooperative was not easy, but gradually was accomplished with strong urging on the part of both FHWA and UMTA Administrators, Turner and Villarreal. Instructions and memorandums signed by both Administrators were issued, joint research projects set up, joint committees organized, and actual exchanges of personnel instituted. During this process, UMTA’s basic legislation was modified to permit use of funds in a manner similar to the 1½ percent planning funds, and the administrative budget increased to allow at least the beginnings of a field organization. A full partnership in attacking urban transportation problems had evolved, and at least in
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