by Hank Dittmar

ISTEA Planner's Workbook

In December 1991, the United States Congress passed and President George Bush signed into law a landmark piece of legislation which reshaped the orientation of national transportation policy and expenditures. The new Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) has been called many things: a law which frames transportation decisions in the context of larger societal goals, a bill to help implement clean air standards, and the bill which empowers hitherto neglected regional organizations called Metropolitan Planning Organizations. The bill provides dedicated funding to metropolitan areas, imposes new planning requirements at both the state and the metropolitan level, focuses attention on asset management and system performance, and greatly increases the type and number of projects that can be funded with federal dollars. ISTEA seems to promise that America will focus on congestion and environmental problems in the nation's metropolitan areas. The ISTEA requirement for the designation of a metropolitan transportation system (MTS) provides the needed tool for addressing urban and suburban problems, just as the bill's call for a National Highway System is intended to provide that focus for intercity, interstate and international passenger and freight movement.

The lack of a defined metropolitan system in America's cities and the historical use of the Interstate system as its surrogate has distorted transportation priorities in most cities. The requirement to develop a Metropolitan Transportation System (MTS) can guide planning, allow the setting of investment priorities and the management of a multimodal transportation system in an efficient manner. The MTS requirement within metropolitan areas can enable regional bodies like Metropolitan Planning Organizations to develop the objectivity and the focus needed to manage the system in a manner that meets both the economic needs of the region today and the environmental objectives required over the long term.

Background on ISTEA Legislation: the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act broke with past practice by looking beyond the old focus on linking the nation's cities through the Interstate highway system to a new realization that the nation also needed to address the mobility, quality of life and environmental problems of the nation's metropolitan areas. To address these problems, Congress recognized that new tools were needed: the flexibility at the state and regional level to fund the type of improvements needed, the ability to enhance existing transportation infrastructure to address its impact on the environment, tools to address the challenges of both maintaining deteriorating physical assets and improving transportation system performance, better planning and programming which was responsive to social and economic factors, and increased involvement of the public and affected parties in the process. Congress also recognized the need for protecting the substantial federal investment in a national transportation system, and thus created a process for designating a National Highway System of approximately 155,000 miles.

The ISTEA legislation clearly provides a focus on the nation's metropolitan areas with its emphasis on heightened planning and programming requirements for Metropolitan Planning Organizations in Transportation Management Areas (metropolitan areas over 200,000 in population) and non attainment areas. The dedication of a portion of Surface Transportation Program (STP) funds to areas over 200,000 in population and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality dollars to projects in air quality non-attainment areas further demonstrates that air quality and congestion relief in the nation's urban and suburban areas are primary concerns in ISTEA.

Implementing ISTEA - Two Years On: ISTEA truly was a major shift in transportation thinking in the United States - from a focus on connecting cities and building a new system to a focus on managing an existing system and addressing its consequences (congestion, air and water pollution, neighborhood and town disruption, loss of open space). Its focus on metropolitan areas represented another major shift as the federal transportation program had traditionally been seen as a block grant to the fifty states. The dedication of specific funding to substate metropolitan areas and for solving problems with environment was a new idea. The states have been slow to respond and the federal government slow to direct change - ISTEA's important planning regulations were not issued until twenty-two months after ISTEA passed.

Similarly, cities, counties, transit operators and citizens in metropolitan areas did not have the power or responsibility to make investment decisions about transportation before the passage of the new law. When this new regional authority and funding is coupled with new planning, programming and public participation deadlines and requirements, it's no wonder that many MPOs along with their constituents feel overwhelmed by the challenge. A real danger exists that the enormity of the challenge can lead to real dissatisfaction with ISTEA as a whole both among those who embrace the change but decry the lack of instant progress and those who fear it.

MTS - An Organizing Concept That Makes ISTEA Workable: some focus of the new ISTEA effort in the metropolitan areas must be defined, around which the new plans, programs and constituencies may organize. The Metropolitan Transportation System can provide this central organizing focus for Metropolitan Planning Organizations, states, local officials, transit operators and interest groups seeking to implement ISTEA. The MTS can be the focus of federal investment in the metropolitan areas through the Transportation Improvement Program and can be an organizing system around which asset management systems such as pavement, bridge, transit and safety systems are designed. Congestion management and intermodal management systems can focus upon the performance of the MTS; and the long range plan can be the twenty year blueprint for developing, operating and managing the MTS. Finally, the Metropolitan Transportation System can be the tool for rationalizing and maintaining the performance of the National Highway System inside the nation's metropolitan areas.

At this point, the ISTEA requirement for designating an MTS as a key part of the metropolitan planning process is barely mentioned in the ISTEA planning regulations promulgated by FHWA and FTA. Several MPOs, in both large and small areas, are taking this Congressional directive seriously, however, with positive results. New legislation introduced in the Congress by Representative Robert Borski of Philadelphia calls for the development of a National Transportation System, with the Metropolitan Transportation System as its key building block.

What is the MTS and how can it be defined: the Metropolitan Transportation System as defined in ISTEA has a multimodal focus, an integration focus and a functional focus. As such, it reaches beyond the old road categories to look at principal arterials in the metropolitan areas, transit corridors, intermodal facilities such as trucking distribution centers, passenger terminals, ports, airports and railheads, as well as rail rights of way. The focus is on the integration of all the modes in the way that the user integrates modes in a trip into a functioning metropolitan system.

The Metropolitan Transportation System accommodates as well the concepts of real time management of the system, user information systems and a focus on the whole trip, not just individual facilities. The concept of managing a metropolitan transportation system also implies coordination of day-to-day activities between the varied parties who own and operate the Metropolitan Transportation System. The purpose of the system is to accommodate, per ISTEA, important national and regional functions (elsewhere defined as ISTEA's planning factors).

Albany, New York: the Capital District Transportation Commission: in Albany, New York, the Capital District Transportation Committee defined their Metropolitan Transportation System to include "regionally significant highways, arterials, transit systems, ports, airports and appropriate non-motorized facilities within metropolitan area boundaries. The National Highway System (NHS), as it is defined within the metropolitan area boundaries, is an explicit subset of the greater MTS." [Capital District Transportation Committee, Definition of the Metropolitan Transportation System, July 1993]

In Albany, designation of a facility for the MTS is based upon the function of the facility, as the objective of the exercise is to designate the regional system so that it can be managed and operated as a system. Accordingly, the Albany MPO suggested five functional criteria for consideration in determining whether a facility should be part of the designated Metropolitan Transportation System. A facility should provide access to major activity centers, facilitate modal and intermodal connections, provide modal options to relieve congested parts of the system, accommodate high volume demand, and/or provide essential service for which limited opportunities exist.

The Albany effort has revolved around the development of their long range transportation plan and has included the development of congestion management strategies for the Metropolitan Transportation System, a freight planning effort for this upstate New York region, and the development of measures of accessibility and performance for the transportation system. The selected measures include such factors as pedestrian, residential and commercial access in addition to the usual measurements of speed and volume for through traffic. The Albany MTS recognizes that users of a Metropolitan Transportation System are also non-users of that system and are hence affected by that system. As such, the planning effort reflects a desire to optimize among community, environmental and mobility objectives and an explicit subordination of transportation system objectives to broader system goals.

San Francisco Bay Area - Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Bay Area Partnership: in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Metropolitan Transportation System was similarly developed along functional lines. Designation of the MTS was a joint responsibility of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (the metropolitan planning organization), Caltrans (the state DOT), the transit operators, cities and counties, congestion management agencies and the local air quality agency. This cooperative effort as part of the metropolitan planning process was critical, as MTS designation also represented a commitment to operate and manage the system so as to improve air quality and provide better access and mobility. This commitment to operate and manage the MTS as a system is embodied in the Bay Area Partnership, a compact between the above agencies to plan, program, finance, operate and manage the MTS in a coordinated, systematic manner. Not only does the Bay Area's approach to designating a Metropolitan Transportation System serve to tie the region together, the commitment to the Partnership provides a way of operationalizing the region's commitment to joint management in a sustainable manner. The Partnership group represents some 36 agencies in the Bay Area, a region with over four million residents, all of whom have some leadership role in managing, building or operating transportation. Its committees include Finance and Legislation, Planning and Programming, and Management and Operations and they are advised by a Blue-Ribbon Committee composed of representatives of the business, minority, social justice and environmental communities.

Such a partnership can have many benefits in improving air quality and reducing congestion. One of the key activities of the Bay Area Partnership is the definition of high impact projects on the MTS which cannot be accomplished unless various of the transportation partners unite. The projects are defined as "Jump Start" projects and have been highly successful. For example, the Bay Area's Freeway Service Patrol project involves the MPO as the contracting entity in a partnership with the California Highway Patrol as tow truck dispatcher and Caltrans as system manager to coordinate a fleet of privately owned tow trucks to speedily remove damaged vehicles from the roadside. The Bay Area Congestion Pricing Demonstration is a partner effort of MTC, Caltrans, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and environmental and business groups to introduce the concept of peak period pricing in the Bay Area. As a third example, MTC, Caltrans and the congestion management agencies in two Bay Area counties are partnering to explore the concept of using the Benicia Bridge - a key entry point into the region - as a gateway to define the limits of system capacity and manage the corridor as an integrated part of the MTS.

Why an MTS and What Can It Do for Regional Political Processes:

1) Provide Needed Focus. A metropolitan transportation system is needed to focus attention and support on congestion and air quality problems in the nation's metropolitan areas. ISTEA has provided the tools - flexibility of funding, improved linkages in the planning and programming process, targeted funds - but a clear focus is needed around which the industry can organize. Just as the nation's Interstate system was successful in garnering the public and the Congress's attention for over thirty years, so the Metropolitan Transportation System can be the vehicle for amassing public and institutional support behind a concerted effort to improve the environment, provide access to all and reduce congestion. Absent an organizing system, political support will be lacking. This is not a suggestion that the MTS replace a national system, but a recognition that the problems of economic vitality, social justice and environmental health in the metropolitan areas are of national concern. To resolve these problems, a central metropolitan focus is needed to complement the intercity, interstate focus of the national system.

2) Rationalize the National System in Metropolitan Areas. The lack of a defined metropolitan system and the dedication of funding to specific categories has resulted in the reliance on the interstate system as the principal carrier of intraurban travel in many of our urban areas - urban roads have been continuations of interstate or secondary roads and have not been designed to serve urban centers or nodes. This fact has had undesirable consequences on the ability of the Interstate system to serve interurban travel, as so much of its capacity has been consumed by local trips. Similarly, the ad hoc use of Interstate routes to accommodate urban travel may have undesirable and distorting impacts on urban form, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued as long ago as the early Sixties. What is needed to prevent the exacerbation of this trend in the future with the new National Highway System is the encouragement of a systematic approach to developing, managing and operating the metropolitan system to accommodate all types of travel. Hence, an MTS can help to rationalize the National Highway System within metropolitan areas.

3) Relate the Management Systems to the Planning Process. MTS can provide a focus for activities related to both asset management and efficiency of the existing system - two activities highlighted as top priorities in ISTEA. The new law requires the development of six management systems and one traffic monitoring system. These new systems are intended to promote activities to wisely manage and maintain the existing transportation infrastructure. The currently proposed regulations for implementing the various asset management systems for pavement, bridges, transit and safety all posit slightly different physical systems. The MTS can define the system in which the federal government has an interest and because the MTS is a basis of the metropolitan planning process, the linkage between the plan and the management systems can be assured.

Similarly, the MTS can define the network for the systems to manage both the asset base and the performance of the metropolitan systems. ISTEA requires the development of 'management systems' covering pavement, safety, bridges and transit on the physical asset side and intermodal facilities and traffic congestion on the performance side of the ledger. These systems are intended to provide data and develop strategies as an aid to system planning and investment. The use of the defined MTS for all the management systems in the metropolitan area would eliminate the confusion and duplication. The use of the MTS for the Congestion Management System would be particularly helpful in reconciling the many ISTEA planning and monitoring requirements into one coordinated process. The Congestion Management System could then become the process for defining the recommended mix of strategies to improve performance on the multimodal metropolitan transportation system. These strategies could include the full range from demand and supply measures to management activities and urban design solutions. Such an approach is being employed in both Albany and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

4) Provide a Focus for Investment. The definition of the Metropolitan Transportation System in the long range plan can also provide an investment focus for the plan and the program. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, all projects proposed for federal funding must either be on the defined Metropolitan Transportation System or be on facilities which can be demonstrated to improve the performance, relieve congestion or enhance the MTS. This funding priority leads eventually to a focus by project sponsors on developing projects with a well defined benefit to the regional system and to a growing awareness of the need to manage the system as a system.

5) Enable the Convening of a Transportation Partnership. The Metropolitan Transportation System provides the impetus for the metropolitan planning organization to undertake a regional transportation planning process. In urban areas, the MTS will be a system with many owners and operators. The State Department of Transportation will own the state highway system, while local government is the owner/ operator of local streets and roads. There may be several transit operators within the metropolitan area, along with port, airport and rail terminals. All are key parts of the MTS and all bring an ownership bias to the table with them. Within the metropolitan area, only the metropolitan planning organization is not an owner/ operator of a system component, and thus the MPO is the logical convener of the partnership to develop, manage and operate the entire MTS.

Conclusion - Making ISTEA Workable in Metropolitan Areas: the development and designation of a Metropolitan Transportation System as an integral part of the transportation planning process can be a vital part of making regional cooperation a reality. It can help to make ISTEA's requirements manageable, help to rally support for transportation improvements, and provide an antidote to the danger that the new National Highway System will distort metropolitan priorities by integrating the NHS into the metropolitan system. The MTS can be a vehicle to bring disparate interests together in deciding what to do with the public capital that is dedicated to transportation. In an era when city-states are being recognized as key economic forces, the development and management of a Metropolitan Transportation System can reinforce the ties that hold these regional economies together and can help to introduce notions such as bioregionalism and regional sustainability into political decision making in the longer term. As Neal R. Peirce noted in his new book Citistates:

What would a visitor from another planet, approaching the dark side of our planet Earth, first discern? Obviously, it would be the clusters of light where humans congregate in great numbers. And approaching any one of them, the visitor would see, as soon as dawn came, a fully integrated organism: a concentration of human development, of roads and rivers and bridges, people and vehicles, air, water and energy, information and commerce, interacting in seemingly infinite ways. This is, of course, the citistate, the true city of our time, the closely interrelated, geographic, environmental entity that chiefly defines late twentieth century civilization.

Some of the features one can't see from the air are as significant as those one can. . . All those dividing lines between center cities, suburbs, counties, townships and urban villages -- the dividing lines politicians tell us are so utterly significant -- are not to be seen from above. Indeed, between work and home, for errand and entertainment and shopping, the Earth's people cross such municipal lines billions of times each day.

Neal R. Peirce with Curtis Johnson and John Stuart Hall, Citistates - How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World, Seven Locks Press, Washington, D.C., 1993, pp.291-2.