Changing Intergovernmental Relations in Transportation Planning

• In Event: Building Cities through Crises: Resilience, Resources, and Infrastructure

Abstract

Metropolitan planning, first mandated by Congress in 1962 to address the rising social and economic costs of the Interstates, was significantly expanded by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) consistent with the new national aim of better integrating America’s highway system with other transportation modes. A review of the literature on the 400+ agencies designated by Congress to perform this role, Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), indicates widespread problems of representation and accountability, widely attributed to the requirement that all local governments have a seat on the MPO board. Local politicians lack a sufficiently regional perspective in this view, biasing planning and programming decisions towards more parochial concerns. The research presented in this paper shifts the focus from the MPOs to the relations between MPOs and the State Transportation Departments (SDOTs), the agencies that largely controlled the planning process prior to 1991. It documents, more specifically, the emergence of a new layer of policy formation within the states where the problems of the prior administrative arrangement had been most acute. The paper goes on to argue that the changing relationship between MPOs and SDOTs represents a significant expansion of administrative capacity in transportation policy generally with significant implications for the upcoming reauthorization of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021.

Author

• Katherine M. Johnson, University of Northern Colorado