This paper proposes that urban transportation policies should combine maximum flexibility with minimum fixed commitment. 'Traffic in Towns' introduced the concept of demand management to restrain the optional use of cars in urban areas. However, demand management has not proved to be an acceptable policy in this country. Hence, if major investment in urban highway schemes is ruled out, the only alternative to demand management is unplanned restraint or traffic congestion. However, because it is impossible to model the full effects of traffic congestion, current methodology must be reconsidered and the rationale for decision making on transportation investment and land use reexamined. This paper proposes a doctrine of maximum flexibility combined with minimum fixed commitment. Maximum flexibility implies a greater emphasis on comprehensive traffic management, while minimum fixed commitment means a lesser emphasis on highway construction and parking structures. Nevertheless, the major fixed commitments are not in the public sector but the private (land use decisions). While traffic is a function of land use, in a congested situation it is difficult to forecast the precise nature of the traffic generated by a particular development, together with its impact on the transportation system. Thus, land use decisions, far from being an integral part of transportation planning, may, in fact, produce additional problems. Hence, land use planning and transportation planning seem to be moving further apart, implying that extra resources may have to be expended in an attempt to alleviate the effects of this breakdown. Thus, traffic management, far from remaining a subordinate and temporary element of transportation planning, will become a more important and permanent feature, not a short term expedient, or an endstate answer to a finite problem, but a continuing sensitive response to a complex challenge.
Abstract