Coordinating Transportation and Land Use

In June 2004, a group of transportation professionals participated in a series of site visits on transportation and growth. The objectives of the visits were to identify factors leading to successful practices in transportation-land use integration, to investigate key challenges and how agencies have worked to overcome these challenges, and to disseminate these findings to a broader audience. This article highlights examples from the site visits and describes some of the most significant findings. Programs and projects visited include comprehensive regional planning and visioning; corridor planning approaches that consider a range of transportation and land use strategies;context-sensitive design practices; state department of transportation participation in local comprehensive planning; provision of federal and state financial and technical assistance to support transit villages, downtown revitalization and sustainable development; and freight corridor planning in support of smart growth objectives. Several common factors were identified that underlie successful efforts to integrate transportation and land use: emphasis on vision, leadership, partnerships, an open and inclusive public process, technical resources, and implementation tools