ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the history of rapid change in metropolitan transportation planning and to show the need for a more fixed but modular process to deal with such change. In fact, it could be said that there was relatively little in the way of "planning" for "transportation" in "urban" areas. "Planning" consisted primarily of making straight-line projections of traffic counts and comparing the forecasted volumes with existing capacities. The early 1950s saw the advent of large-scale urban transportation studies. The Highway Act of 1962 required that a comprehensive, coordinated, and continuous transportation plan be implemented by 1965—otherwise no Federal funds, especially those for the Interstate system provided by Congress in 1956, would be forthcoming. The beauty and the bane of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 was that it forced planners and designers to consider most of the significant impacts.
