Chapter 4: Some lessons from current practice

The transportation studies

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The second main reaction to the transport problems raised by sprawl has been the development of new and more intensive methods of studying them. To an outside observer the great ’transportation studies’ in the metropolitan areas (the best-known are the Chicago Area Transportation Study, and the Penn-Jersey Study focused on Philadelphia) are the really striking features in American practice today. These studies are highly-organised, costly, continuing affairs, collecting and processing vast quantities of facts and figures with the help of elaborate computer techniques. They are notable in that they are applied over large areas, covering multitudes of small authorities in whose hands the zoning decisions lie. In a few words, the objectives of these studies are first to predict the forms that development will take as a result of the play of the property market and the likely decisions of the zoning authorities; then to forecast the consequences in terms of movement in the general sense; and finally to interpret the movement needs in terms of transport systems, that is to say to produce actual proposals for roads, railways, etc., to meet the movement needs. It is important to note that the studies are not, to use their own jargon, ‘exclusively auto-oriented’, indeed the fact that most of them are producing proposals for electric railways (‘mass transit’ to use the jargon again) to assist in handling heavy commuter-loads is the supremely significant result that is emerging. It appears to indicate a realisation that in certain conditions the mass use of individual cars either cannot be accommodated, or is a grossly inefficient way of moving large numbers of people.

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These studies bring to light a curious contrast between the political philosophies of this country and the United States. Here, under the stern discipline of a shortage of land, we have developed an elaborate and very onerous system of land use control, the need for which is the subject of a fair amount of agreement between the political parties. On the other hand we cling to ideas of freedom in transport and travel, believing people should have the right to go as they like. In the United States freedom in the use of land is jealously guarded, but, if the transportation studies are anything to judge by, there is a growing realisation that the close and planned co-ordination of various means of transport is essential to urban survival. Part of the explanation of this latter attitude is doubtless the much higher car ownership and the problems of sprawl, which have produced a crisis-point that we have not yet reached.