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The Washington transportation plan: Technics or politics?

  • Metropolitan Transportation Policy
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References

  1. For a full description of the plan and procedures, see National Capital Planning Commission and National Capital Regional Planning Council:Transportation Plan—National Capital Region, USGPO Washington 1959, hereafter referred to as NCRTP. For a discussion of organization and approach the testimoney of Paul Watt, Harland Bartholemew, and Kenneth Hoover are instructive inWashington Metropolitan Area Transportation Problems, Hearings before the Joint Committee on Washington Metropolitan Problems, Congress of the United States, 85th congress, Second Session, May 22, 23 and June 10, 1958. A rich source of testimony and exhibits can also be found inTransportation Plan for the National Capital Region, Hearings before the Joint Committee on Washington Metropolitan Problems, Congress of the United States, 86th Congress. 1st Session.

  2. Council for Economic and Industry Research:Economic Base Study for the General Development Plan, National Capital Region, Washington, 1956.

  3. John. T. Howard (Consultant) with staffs of the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Capital Regional Planning Council:General Development Plan for the National Capital Region, Washington, 1959.

  4. Wilbur Smith and Associates:Traffic Engineering Study, Mass Transportation Survey, National Capital Region, New Haven, 1959.

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  5. DeLeuwCather and Co:Civil Engineering Report, Mass Transportation Study, National Capital Region, Chicago, 1959.

  6. See Institute for Public Administration:Preliminary Financial and Organizational Report Regarding Metropolitan Transportation, Printed for the use of the Joint Committee on Washington Metropolitan Problems, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1959.

  7. NCRTP, P. 13

  8. NCRTP, P. 23

  9. NCRTP, p. 39

  10. NCRTP, p. 1

  11. NCRTP, p. 72

  12. NCRTP, p. 7

  13. For an excellent discussion of the concept of “system” in transportation see National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council:Conference on Transportation Research (Publication 840), Washington 1960, Chapter VI, “Potential for Transportation Analysis”.

  14. There are also a host of considerations related to sociological and psychological factors, such as the different life patterns and movement patterns of various ethnic and racial groups. These interrelationships must also be weighed in the balance.

  15. There is a very strong parallel between the policy aspects of urban transportation system development and river basin development, which becomes especially vivid when one persuses, John V. Krutilla and Otto Eckstein:Multiple Purpose River Valley Development, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958) Chapter III, “Market Mechanics, River Basin Development and Efficiency”.

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  16. This in effect is what Lichfield argues for: Nathaniel Lichfield: “Cost-Benefit Analysis in City Planning” in theJournal of the American Institute of Planners, v. 26, n. 4, November 1960, pp. 273–279.

  17. In passing, we have most serious reservations about the practice of deriving predictors by hand fitting curves to scatter diagrams whose observations are realy data averages (oT medians) by zones. Such a curve (1) has no logical reference to a regression curve fitted to a sample of the raw data, and (2) is not susceptible to any measure of statistical reliability. Any predictive models incorporating, such procedures should be viewed with extravagant caution. See, for exmplem, F. Houston Wynn: “Studies of Trip Generation in the Nations's Capital, 1956–58,” in Highway Research Board Bulletin 230:Trip Generation and Urban Freeway Planning, Washington, 1959, pp. 1–52.

  18. A sumemary description of these effects can be found in A. J. Bone and Martin Wohl: “Massachusetts Route 128 Impact Study” in Highway Research Board Bulletin 227:Highways and Economic Development, Washington, 1959, pp. 21–49.

  19. Cf. Lubar, Robert: “Interchange Ahead”,Forture, October, 1958, p. 131 ff.

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The authors, members of the staff of Resources of the Future Inc., wish to acknowledge their debt to the Committee on Administrative Problems of Metropolitan Development of the Washington Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration, in whose discussion of the Washington Transportation Plan they were privileged to partcipate. The reflections in this paper were stimulated in considerable degree by the thoughtful probing of the whole problem which took place in this Committee in 1959.

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Wingo, L., Perloff, H.S. The Washington transportation plan: Technics or politics?. Papers of the Regional Science Association 7, 249–262 (1961). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01969084

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