TRANSPORTATION PLANNING: IS THERE A ROAD AHEAD?

Land use/transportation studies made their first appearance in Great Britain in the early 1960's. A list of studies carried out in 99 towns and cities in the United Kingdom indicates that such studies have been conducted in most major cities, and that the programme of studies shows every sign of continuing unabated in spite of doubts and criticisms of the value of such studies. This paper attempts to re-examine some of these issues, in conjunction with a broad review of the state of large-scale transportation planning today. The author describes the objectives of transportation studies as to prepare a transportation plan for a city or region designed to cope most efficiently with anticipated travel demands in some future design year. The studies listed are considered to have fulfilled their chief objectives in that forecasts were made and plans produced, but how good were the results? It is suggested that the studies have been far from successful, e.g. An indication of the lack of success is the lack of implementation of the plans and arguments to support this contention are reviewed. The reasons for lack of success are examined in detail. Complexity is felt to be a major fault in that the data requirements of a particular model can become excessive, and also that the interaction between variables become so numerous that the significance of the various assumptions become submerged in a sea of detail. Accuracy is considered to be of fundamental importance, and errors are considered to arise from two possible sources: errors of specification and errors of measurement. The third fault is felt to be that such planning has attempted to answer the wrong questions. In conclusion the author suggests that the use of existing models should be limited, that there should be a rigorous review of existing models, and puts forward proposals for future improvements in transportation planning models. /TRRL/

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00410683
• Corporate Authors:

  Printerhall Limited

  29 Newmart Street
  London W1P 3PE,   England 
• Authors:
  • Atkins, S T
• Publication Date: 1977-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 58-62
• Serial:
  • Traffic Engineering & Control
  • Volume: 18
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Hemming Group, Limited
  • ISSN: 0041-0683
  • Serial URL: http://www.tecmagazine.com/

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Demand; Errors; Forecasting; Land use; Mathematical models; Planning; Population; Transportation; Transportation planning; Travel demand; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Transportation models
• Geographic Terms: United Kingdom
• ITRD Terms: 285: Demand (econ); 6440: Error; 132: Forecast; 356: Land use; 6473: Mathematical model; 1054: Network (traffic); 143: Planning; 335: Population; 8119: United Kingdom; 313: Urban area
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Economics; Planning and Forecasting; Society; Transportation (General); I10: Economics and Administration; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00156435
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)
• Report/Paper Numbers: Analytic
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 13 1977 12:00AM