Revisiting Transportation Planning

Transportation planning in most states and cities is failing to plan for multi modal transportation systems and is often politically driven. Planners are continuing to do project planning. This essay proposes a new direction for transportation planning based on transportation trip purpose(s) and market sheds/corridors. The five trip purposes:journey to work, goods movement, tourism, economic generators and community travel. Understanding travel purposes in the market sheds will allow transportation planners to integrate these purposes into transportation systems, irrespective of mode, to meet the market needs. Our transportation infrastructure is a costly investment. We need to make smarter transportation investment decisions. We can no longer remain intolerant to our customer’s purpose(s) for transportation. We need to understand the market and its relationship to economic and social goals to better plan our transportation system.