Since 1923 motor fuel taxes have been the principal instrument by which revenues are raised for the construction and maintenance of the California highway system. Fuel taxes are distinguished from most other taxes because they have been conceived of as a “user fee†rather than as a...

Behind all debates over the adequacy of highway revenues lies the tricky issue of how much money states and the federal government ought to spend on highways. States and the federal government have historically tried to determine revenue needs with technical reports known as "needs...

American attitudes toward transportation planning have recently undergone significant change. For three decades after the end of World War II, public policy emphasized the construction of new highway and transit facilities in order to remove the backlog of needs which resulted from the combined...

Winston Churchill once wrote an insightful analysis of architecture (1). According to Churchill, we first designed buildings to accommodate our behavior and our social and cultural patterns as we understood them. But our understanding of these things was imperfect, and different architects...

Transportation planners are increasingly adopting policies aimed at changing travel choices made by citizens. Rather than trying to solve transportation problems by building highways and transit routes, "transportation demand management" relies on incentives and disincentives to promote...

As the director of a major university transportation research center, I am honored and pleased to have been included in this program in which we are exploring the contributions that research can make to the refocusing of transportation knowledge and planning practice. It is actually quite rare...

Choices among alternative transit capital investments are often complex and politically controversial. There is renewed interest in the use of performance indicators to assist in making rational and defensible choices for the investment of public funds. To improve the evaluation of rail and bus...

The Coastal Transportation Corridor Ordinance attempts to regulate traffic congestion in a busy Los Angeles community by requiring new real estate developments to mitigate their trips and to contribute to a trust fund to be used to improve traffic flow within the affected area. In order to...