In the Shadow of ISTEA

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Creator
  • Bonk, David
    • Other Affiliation: Senior Transportation Planner, Town of Chapel Hill, NC
Abstract
  • Between the idea and reality falls the shadow — T.S. Elliot The passage of the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) seemed to present the urban areas of North Carolina with an historic opportunity to play a much greater role in the development of transportation plans and the funding of transportation projects. As the name of the Act implies, Congress intended that federal transportation policy would promote multi-modal planning for the nation's transportation system. The most important changes in federal transportation policy included in ISTEA deal with the roles of metropolitan planning organizations in the development of transportation policies and how those policies are reflected through the funding of projects through transportation improvement programs. Metropolitan planning organizations and the local governments that comprise them argued that the transportation problems in urban areas required a flexible approach to problem solving. They insisted that, as with many other problems, those officials that were closest to the problem had the best understanding of what the local community wanted to do to solve the problem. ISTEA attempted to provide the largest urban areas with a far greater degree of local responsibility and authority to solve those transportation problems. Although ISTEA represented a fundamental change in federal transportation policy, the interpretation and implementation of ISTEA by the North Carolina Department of Transportation has limited its impact on the state's urban areas.
Date of publication
DOI
Resource type
  • Article
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Journal title
  • Carolina Planning Journal
Journal volume
  • 19
Journal issue
  • 2
Page start
  • 2
Page end
  • 5
Language
  • English
Digital collection
  • Carolina Planning Journal

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file details 02ISTEA.pdf 2019-04-23 Public Download