What is Transportation Planning?To answer this question, I drew on the following discussion from

Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute

www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm50.htm#_Toc28050889

It provides a comprehensive context for understanding transportation planning issues

What is Transportation Planning?

Planning is the process of deciding what to do and how to do it.

Effective planning allows people’s needs, preferences and values to be reflected in decisions.

Planning occurs at many different levels, from day-to-day decisions made by individuals and families, to major decisions made by governments and businesses that have comprehensive, long-term impacts on society.  A basic principle of good planning is that individual, short-term decisions are coordinated in order to support strategic, long-term objectives.

Comprehensive planning should allow transportation, land use, economic development and social planning decisions to be coordinated.

The overall goal of transportation planning should be to create a better, more prosperous and more sustainable place.

Six Elements of Effective Transportation Planning

The following six principles are key to ensuring that transportation plans supports the social, environmental and economic goals of the society

1. Understand the difference between goals and objectives2. Plan for development not growth3. Keep in mind the broader impacts of transportation plans4. Plan based on desired outcomes, not on projection of past trends5. Consider all relevant issues, not just those that are easy to measure6. Focusing on access and not mobility

1. Goals versus Objectives

Goals are desired outcomes to be achieved, such as health, equity and happiness.

Objectives are ways to achieve goals.

During a planning process it is helpful to ask regularly, “What are we trying to achieve?”

The ‘what’ is the goal – we develop objectives to achieve this goal.

It is important not to confuse goals and objectives because Goals are fundamental – we can’t just substitute one goal for another.One the other hand, different objectives can be employed to achieve a given goal. It is important to keep our options open and select the objective that is best for the situation.

2. Plan for Development, not for Growth

Planners must make a distinction between growth (increased quantity) and development (increased quality).

In other words, growth means getting bigger, while development means getting better.

Transportation plans should contribute to the development of a place not simply to its growth.

Zurich – The Little Big CityIn Zurich in the 1970s, transportation planning was done with the explicit intent that they wanted to develop but not necessarily to grow. Other places might be willing to accommodate both development and growth. But the important point is that development should be accorded the higher priority – not growth.

3. Don’t Overlook the Wider Impacts of Transportation Plans

Transportation plans always have wide ranging impacts, affecting not just travel but also economic, social and environmental aspects of our lives.

These impacts may be short term or much longer term, andthey may extend across geographic and political boundaries.

If we don’t consider these wider impacts, our plans will lead to unintended or undesirable consequences.

Understanding the Wider Impacts of Transportation Planning

Litman define three levels of impact from transportation planning

First level – Direct impacts or changes in travel conditions and costs. Second level – Current indirect impacts or changes in travel behavior, tax revenue, and external impacts. Third level – Long-term indirect impacts or changes in land use, economic development.

Example of the Different Levels of Impact of a Transportation Plan Increasing roadway capacity can have the first-level impacts of initially reducing traffic congestion and increasing vehicle traffic speeds.

A second-level impact is that the increased traffic capacity may attract additional travel from other routes and times (Rebound Effects), and it may create barriers to walking and cycling.

A third-level impact may be that over the long run, land use patterns become more dispersed and automobile dependent (Land Use Impacts). 

These second and third order impacts can result in what is know as called 'induced traffic' - traffic over and above what one would expect from just extrapolating from the past rate of growth.

Induced Traffic

Predicted Traffic

Actual TrafficTraffic Volume

Years

Date of Widening

The Different Geographic Scales of Planning

Planning also occurs at many different geographic scales. Some geographic scales reflect natural areas and boundaries and others just reflect political jurisdictions (see table below).

In your project you need to be careful in understanding at which level of geography you are working. This can be very confusing - sometimes plans apply to overlapping levels of geography.

Also, the impact of transportation planning often extends beyond the boundary of the jurisdiction for which the plan was developed.

4. Plan based on desired outcomes, not on projection of past trends

Contemporary transportation planning is often based on using past trends to predict future vehicle traffic. This predicted traffic volume is then used to determine the size of new transportation facilities. One problem with this approach is that it assumes that the factors that led traffic volume to increase in the past will continue into the future.

Supposedly in banking they know that this is not a reasonable approach since they warn you ‘Past performance is no guarantee of future results.’

We also have to consider the long term impact of widening roads, for example – as we discussed earlier - because they change the conditions, they can lead to induced traffic, which in turn makes the prediction useless.

The approach of basing planning on past trends is derisively referred to as ‘predict and provide’ planning by some.

Road Widening Resulting from "Predict and Provide" Planning in Kingston, Jamaica(source: Garrick, Half-way-Tree Rd, Kingston 2004)

Kingston is an exampleof a place which has

experienced induced traffic

5. Consider all relevant issues, not just those that are easy to measure

Vehicle traffic is relatively easy to measure, so transportation system quality tends to be evaluated based largely on automobile travel conditions (e.g., average traffic speeds, roadway Level-of-Service, vehicle congestion delay, vehicle operating costs, parking supply).

Many other transportation impacts, including impacts on transit service quality, non-motorized transport and land use accessibility, are often harder to measure and tend to be ignored.

This approach tends to favor automobile-oriented solutions, and undervalues alternative solutions to transportation problems

6. Focus on Access not Mobility

In order to understand this issue we need distinguish between traffic, mobility and access as follows:

Vehicle Traffic Conventional transportation often reflects the assumption that transportation means motor vehicle traffic.

In this approach all vehicles are treated the same

Personal MobilityA more comprehensive approach reflects the assumption that transportation means personal mobility, measured in terms of person-trips and person-kilometers.

In this approach transit is given priority over cars, walk is considered

Access The most comprehensive definition of transportation is Accessibility, the ability to reach desired goods, services and activities. This is the ultimate goal of transportation, and so is the best definition to use in transportation planning.

In this approach we consider land use as well as travel options

I will illustrate other aspect of access versus mobility using slides Provided Courtesy of

Ian Lockwood and Paul Moore Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin, Inc.

Understanding the Difference between Accessibility and Mobility

Do these two places provide the same level of Access? Mobility?

Detroit 1949 Street Network Which is emphasized here? Access or Mobility

Viewpoint in next slide

Detroit Existing Street Network Which is emphasized here? Access or Mobility