Assessing the experience of mandated collaborative inter-jurisdictional transport planning in the United States

Abstract

This paper explores collaborative transport planning among governmental authorities where jurisdictions overlap and the lines of authority are ambiguous or unclear–an increasingly common situation in this era of waning trade and travel restrictions. We do this by examining the experience of mandated collaborative transportation planning among state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in the USA following a significant change to national surface transportation policy in the early 1990s. To understand how state transport planning and plans changed following the inter-jurisdictional collaboration mandated by passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), we examine recent statewide transport planning in 14 of the largest US states and conducted interviews with 66 state and regional planners. We find that, despite the myriad topics that state DOTs tried to include within their comprehensive statewide plans, these plans have had, at best, a limited influence on metropolitan transport planning and activities. Despite this, we find that the mandated collaborative planning did help to increase inter-agency coordination on issues (1) where network or environmental externalities transcend regional boundaries, (2) that require the political clout of a higher-level governmental authority to enforce locally unpopular decisions, or (3) that take advantage of institutional economies of scale.