Improving Metropolitan Decision Making In Transportation

As Congress debates renewed transportation funding, the new law needs to expand metropolitan area control to fulfill the promises of previous reform efforts and to maintain a transportation system that works for the 21st century, argue Robert Puentes and Linda Bailey. This policy brief summarizes the extent of funding and program authority metropolitan areas are currently afforded under TEA-21. This brief does so by examining the evolution of metropolitan transportation decision making and the role of metropolitan areas under current law. In the end, it argues that federal transportation law needs to expand existing funding sources and decision making to allow metropolitan areas to fulfill the promises of previous reform efforts and to maintain a transportation system that works for 21st century metropolitan America.