Chapter 2: Transport Planning

Transport planning has undergone radical change in the last forty years, and it is now barely recognizable from its origins in the highway-building movement and its concerns over increasing the capacity of the system to meet the expected levels of demand. The focus in this chapter is more modest as it concentrates on the recent past and on land-based passenger transport, with a heavy emphasis on strategic and urban planning issues. It reviews the most recent developments in transport planning (1990–2000), and it describes the new agenda and the key role of transport planners in promoting sustainable development. Over this period, there have been three great changes in the requirements placed on transport planning, namely the huge growth in car ownership and congestion, the withdrawal of the state from the provision of transport services through regulatory reform and privatization, and the new environmental debates.