Incremental Regionalism: Staged Approach to Development of Regional Transportation Organizations
Abstract
Recent efforts to form a regional transportation organization for the greater Charlotte, North Carolina, region are discussed. The 13-county area, more than 126 km (75 mi) across, is uniformly low density and consists of 43 independent jurisdictions and cities, five state department of transportation districts, and five metropolitan planning organizations in two states. Regional travel patterns are just beginning to emerge along the highly radial road network. Since the late 1980s, at least four attempts to form consensus on regional transportation planning needs have been made but all have failed to galvanize. The history of these efforts is traced, and the causes of success and failure are reviewed. It is suggested that failure occurred primarily because the region is not yet truly integrated economically and the regional plans were politically too advanced. An incremental model of regional organization growth is then proposed. In this model organizational structure is related to the demography, commuter patterns, and physical, economic, and political regional integration over the next 30 years. Regions go through 17 definable steps as they emerge from separate cities and become part of large metropolises. The key roles of policy officials, businesses, staff, and others in facilitating regional planning in the absence of regional structure are explored.
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Article first published: January 1996
Issue published: January 1996
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This article was published in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board.
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