United States
Transportation planning in the United States is in the midst of a shift similar to that taking place in the United Kingdom, away from the singular goal of moving vehicular traffic and towards an approach that takes into consideration the communities and lands through which streets, roads, and highways pass ("the context"). More so, it places a greater emphasis on passenger rail networks, which had been neglected until recently. This new approach, known as Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS), seeks to balance the need to move people efficiently and safely with other desirable outcomes, including historic preservation, environmental sustainability, and the creation of vital public spaces.
The initial guiding principles of CSS came out of the 1998 "Thinking Beyond the Pavement" conference as a means to describe and foster transportation projects that preserve and enhance the natural and built environments, as well as the economic and social assets of the neighborhoods they pass through. CSS principles have since been adopted as guidelines for highway design in federal legislation. Also, in 2003, the Federal Highway Administration announced that under one of its three Vital Few Objectives (Environmental Stewardship and Streamlining) they set the target of achieving CSS integration within all state Departments of Transportation by September 2007. The recent pushes for advancing transportation planning has led to the development of a professional certification program, the Professional Transportation Planner, to be launched in 2007.
In recent years, there has been a movement to provide "complete" transportation corridors under the "complete streets" movement. In response to auto-centric design of transportation networks, complete streets encompass all users and modes of transportation in a more equitable manner. The complete streets movement entails many of the CSS principles as well as pedestrian, bicycle and older adult movements to improve transportation in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Transportation Planning
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—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
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—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)