Urban Transportation Planning in the United States

Urban Transportation Planning in the United States
Author: Edward Weiner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1461454077

The development of U.S. urban transportation policy over the past half-century illustrates the changing relationships among federal, state, and local governments. This comprehensive text examines the evolution of urban transportation planning from early developments in highway planning in the 1930s to today’s concerns over sustainable development, security, and pollution control. Highlighting major national events, the book examines the influence of legislation, regulations, conferences, federal programs, and advances in planning procedures and technology. The volume provides in-depth coverage of the most significant event in transportation planning, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, which created a federal mandate for a comprehensive urban transportation planning process, carried out cooperatively by states and local governments with federal funding. Claiming that urban transportation planning is more sophisticated, costly, and complex than its highway and transit planning predecessors, the book demonstrates how urban transportation planning evolved in response to changes in such factors as the environment, energy, development patterns, intergovernmental coordination, and federal transit programs. This updated, revised, and expanded edition features two new chapters on global climate change and managing under conditions of constrained resources, and covers the impact of the most recent legislation, 50 years after the Highway Act of 1962, emphasizing such timely issues as security, oil dependence, performance measurement, and public-private sector collaboration.

Transportation Decision Making

Transportation Decision Making
Author: Kumares C. Sinha
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2011-09-09
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1118169662

This pioneering text provides a holistic approach to decisionmaking in transportation project development and programming, whichcan help transportation professionals to optimize their investmentchoices. The authors present a proven set of methodologies forevaluating transportation projects that ensures that all costs andimpacts are taken into consideration. The text's logical organization gets readers started with asolid foundation in basic principles and then progressively buildson that foundation. Topics covered include: Developing performance measures for evaluation, estimatingtravel demand, and costing transportation projects Performing an economic efficiency evaluation that accounts forsuch factors as travel time, safety, and vehicle operatingcosts Evaluating a project's impact on economic development and landuse as well as its impact on society and culture Assessing a project's environmental impact, including airquality, noise, ecology, water resources, and aesthetics Evaluating alternative projects on the basis of multipleperformance criteria Programming transportation investments so that resources can beoptimally allocated to meet facility-specific and system-widegoals Each chapter begins with basic definitions and concepts followedby a methodology for impact assessment. Relevant legislation isdiscussed and available software for performing evaluations ispresented. At the end of each chapter, readers are providedresources for detailed investigation of particular topics. Theseinclude Internet sites and publications of international anddomestic agencies and research institutions. The authors alsoprovide a companion Web site that offers updates, data foranalysis, and case histories of project evaluation and decisionmaking. Given that billions of dollars are spent each year ontransportation systems in the United States alone, and that thereis a need for thorough and rational evaluation and decision makingfor cost-effective system preservation and improvement, this textshould be on the desks of all transportation planners, engineers,and educators. With exercises in every chapter, this text is anideal coursebook for the subject of transportation systems analysisand evaluation.

Urban Transportation Planning in the United States

Urban Transportation Planning in the United States
Author: Edward Weiner
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1999-02-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This work describes the evolution of urban transportation planning from its beginnings in early highway and transit planning to late-1990s concerns for the environment and sustainable development. The author discusses the influence of legislation, regulations and federal programmes.