Todd Litman's blog

Critics claim that smart growth policies are ineffective at reducing vehicle travel and achieving intended to objectives. This column critiques their arguments.

Changing demands justify policies and programs that encourage people too choose efficient travel options and smart growth locations. Are these coercive?

Planners must anticipate how people would respond to new options, such as better walking, cycling and public transit services. This requires imagination.

Many people assume incorrectly that motorists pay their share of roadway costs through fuel taxes. Not so. Fairness would require much higher motor vehicle user fees to finance roadways.

The "Urban Mobility Report" produces widely-cited congestion cost estimates. It is biased in various ways that exaggerate congestion costs and roadway expansion benefits. Few users of these cost estimates seem aware of these problems.

Transportation system users rate inaffordability as a top concern, but conventional planning ignores this issue. Increasing transport affordability requires changing planning practices to favor more affordable modes and more accessible development.

Governments need money to finance transportation system improvements, but revenues from traditional sources are flat. This is leading to debate over how best to generate new funds. There are many possible options, some better than others, because in addition to raising revenue, they support other strategic objectives. Politicians will be tempted to choose the easiest funding options. It is up to planners to point out the best options, taking into account all impacts.

There are various ways to define transport efficiency which can lead to very different conclusions as to what transport policies and projects are best overall. Conventional planning tends to evaluate transport system performance based on mobility, which assumes that faster travel is always better. A new planning paradigm evaluates transport system performance based on accessibility (people's ability to access services and activities) which leads to very different definitions of efficiency and very different conclusions about how to improve transport systems.

One of planners’ most important jobs is to help develop the indicators and frameworks use to define problems and evaluate potential solution. Often, a particular solution will seem cost effective and beneficial when evaluated one way, and wasteful and undesirable if evaluated another. It is important that we help develop comprehensive evaluation frameworks that effectively inform decisions.

Greetings from Manila where I'm attending the Asian Development Bank's Transport Forum 2012. It is an exciting and important event: the types of transport planning investments that the bank supports now can have huge impacts on the nature of future.