Expanding Metropolitan Highways

Reviews existing research on the links among highway capacity, traffic flow characteristics, travel demand, land use, vehicle emissions, air quality, and energy use in metropolitan areas; Identifies the conditions most likely to affect emissions and energy use; reviews the reliability of models and analyses that regional and state planning agencies use to forecast travel demand and land use, emission levels, and energy consumption; and recommends research strategies, modeling improvements, and data collection efforts to improve analytic capabilities.

"This synthesis will be of interest to state DOT bridge maintenance and construction engineers; regulators, consultants, and contractors involved with the removal of lead paint from bridges and structures; and structural coatings specialists, chemists, and researchers. This synthesis describes the current state of the practice for the removal of lead-based paint from existing highway steel bridges."--Avant-propos.

Growing concerns about traffic congestion and rapid suburban expansion (also known as sprawl) have reignited interest in the ways in which highway spending affects metropolitan growth patterns. This discussion paper extracts the best evidence to date on how highway investments distribute growth and economic activity across metropolitan areas. The paper also offers ideas on how transportation financing and policies can better respond to the various costs and benefits of highway projects in a region.

The Road to Inequality shows how policies that shape geographic space change our politics, focusing on the effects of the largest public works project in American history: the federal highway system. For decades, federally subsidized highways have selectively facilitated migration into fast-growing suburbs, producing an increasingly non-urban Republican electorate. This book examines the highway programs' policy origins at the national level and traces how these intersected with local politics and interests to facilitate complex, mutually-reinforcing processes that have shaped America's growing urban-suburban divide and, with it, the politics of metropolitan public investment. As Americans have become more polarized on urban-suburban lines, attitudes towards transportation policy - a once quintessentially 'local' and non-partisan policy area - are now themselves driven by partisanship, endangering investments in metropolitan programs that provide access to opportunity for millions of Americans.