Introduction

TCSP Program Objectives

How Does the Program Work?

First Year Awards

Project Descriptions

TCSP Accomplishments
Encouraging Innovation
Creating Partnerships
Leveraging Opportunities
Strengthening the Planning Process
Building the Knowledge Base
Demonstrating Results

TCSP Looks to the Future

TCSP Home

TCSP Accomplishments

Strengthening the Planning Process

TCSP projects are designed to support and enhance the existing State and metropolitan transportation planning processes. FY 1999 grant projects are being undertaken with extensive public involvement. The program also is funding the development and application of improved planning analysis techniques. These techniques are designed to improve the effectiveness with which community concerns, environmental impacts, and system-preservation issues are introduced into transportation planning and will assist communities in making appropriate choices for transportation investments. 

One type of enhancement includes greater consideration of the land development and community impacts of various transportation investment alternatives. For example, Lansing, Michigan, is developing a series of innovative planning techniques that will help formulate consensus on new land-use patterns and on new policies to guide land-use change. These include the use of three-dimensional computer imagery of alternative growth scenarios and the creation of a "sprawl index." The North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, in facilitating the redevelopment of abandoned brownfield sites by freight- related businesses, will recommend modifications to the transportation capital planning process to give greater weight to funding projects that promote the redevelopment of brownfield sites and more environmentally efficient goods movement, including transit and other projects that address workforce accessibility to such sites. 

TCSP projects also will result in new methods and techniques to inform decisionmaking. The Central Bluegrass Region in Kentucky is developing a Corridor Master Planning Handbook that will help communities reconcile development pressures with the need for livable communities. Anchorage, Alaska, is redesigning its public involvement process to better empower the public, facilitate communication, and engage the community in a meaningful dialogue on land-use and transportation issues. The Treasure Valley area in Idaho is developing an education process that defines barriers to attaining transportation-related community preservation goals. Treasure Valley’s process will identify a range of alternative policy choices that can be incorporated directly into the existing land-use and transportation policy framework.

[NEXT]