The Connection between Land Use and Transportation: The Oregon Experience

The design, as well as the coherence, of modern cities is heavily influenced by the impacts of transportation systems. The use of mass transit in New York and London, (and its absence in Jakarta) as well as the rise of automobile use in Beijing, all force choices in business locations, residential uses, and recreation. The design of most modern cities has been shaped incrementally by automobile use and competitive demands on land, expenditures and attention of public entities. This paper is the story as to how one such entity, an American state, has sought to break out of a cycle of expensive road-building to meet increasing transportation demands and to do so thoughtfully through the formulation of a multi-modal transportation policy integrated with its land use planning and regulation that looks beyond separate road-building proposals. Oregon has a history similar to other American states (and likely to most first-world entities), except for its unique (for the United States in any event) approach since the early 1970s to requiring comprehensive planning and also requiring that land use regulations and actions be consistent with plans. This planning culture enabled the state to take an equally momentous second step in 1991 with the adoption of its Transportation Planning Rule (TPR), which bound the local governments of the state, and the state itself, to a new, integrated regime that related transportation to land use planning and regulation. The TPR arose over conflicts over the impacts of road proposals that would urbanize rural areas and required consideration of other modes of transportation and reconsideration of existing transportation plans, as well as deployment of new techniques to reduce dependency on the automobile. The paper then analyzes transportation policy under the TPR, including its purposes, definitions, planning and implementation requirements and avoidance of urbanizing influences of transportation facilities connecting urban areas. The effect of the TPR on urban design has been transformative: VMT (vehicle miles traveled) have been cut; new major road facilities or improvements must be justified in a rigorous process that includes evaluation of alternatives (especially the use of other modes of transportation); mass transportation has now become a viable alternative for public finance, as well as environmental, reasons; and new uses not previously anticipated in local plans, must show in a measurable way that they will not adversely impact existing transportation systems or must offset those adverse impacts by undertaking necessary improvements. Finally, the paper looks to the future to consider phenomena likely to have significant effects on transportation systems going forward: the effect of the “sharing economy” and telecommuting, increasing demands for environmental mitigation of new or expanded facilities, reduction or elimination of direct and indirect road subsidies through political restraints on available public funds so that actual transportation costs are imposed through new or increased road tolling and parking charges, the failure of petrol taxes to keep pace with transportation needs, and measuring the incremental costs of new uses in terms of transportation impacts. In short, Oregon has now had 25 years of experience in studying the relationship of transportation and planning and this paper evaluates that effort.