F. Kaid Benfield

MPOs key to fixing planning

Director, NRDC Smart Growth Program, Aug 04, 09.

Tagged with transportation, urban planning, hgac, commentary, mpos

Our nation’s metro regions need stronger tools to address transportation and land use issues. I haven’t turned to the issue of metropolitan regionalism in a while (last time was in April), but a new column by Bill Hudnut on Citiwire inspires me to do so again today. Bill’s bio lists him, accurately, as a man of many facets: “Former four-term (GOP) mayor of Indianapolis and congressman, author, public speaker, TV commentator, think tank fellow, elected official, and clergyman.”

I’ve had the good fortune of working with Bill occasionally and highly value his experience and judgment. He’s right on the money this time as he argues for reform of metro-level transportation planning.

As I have written before, I believe most of the issues of growth, mobility, equity and the environment that we address here are fundamentally regional in character. But our political mechanisms place most of the authority for dealing with them at the smallest levels of local government. This causes all sorts of chaos, since city and suburban municipalities by their nature do not consider matters beyond their limited, frequently artificial borders and too often drain people, jobs and resources from each other while competing for revenues—to cite just one type of dysfunction. This breeds sprawl, which breeds increased traffic and inconcenience, and so on.

While mayor, Bill actually did something about this issue, advancing a form of merged government between the city of Indianapolis and surrounding Marion County. And he believes that we have an existing structure on which to build regional solutions in the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) mandated by federal transportation law.

I have had the same thought and said so, but it’s reassuring to read it from Bill. Now, MPOs in the real world are fraught with problems of inequitable representation and political weakness. In most places, they don’t work very well. But the idea of vesting multi-jurisdictional MPOs, each covering a metropolitan area, with defined political responsibilities is a good one.

Note: The Houston-Galveston Area Council is the MPO for the Houston region.

Full story: Village Green: How to fix local transit & road planning
Source: Huffington Post, August 3, 2009

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