Programs, Tools, and Approaches available to support the integration of land use and transportation planning initiatives

Photo of people meeting to demonstrate public involvement.

Transportation Planning Capacity Building

FHWA/FTA Transportation Planning Capacity Building (TPCB) initiatives assist state and local decision makers in addressing complex transportation issues by providing information and resources on improving and enhancing many aspects of transportation planning programs and activities.

Climate Change and Transportation

The FHWA has created a website that presents the results of research with the intention of advancing the practice and application of transportation planning among state, regional, and local transportation planning agencies to successfully meet growing concerns about the relationship between transportation and climate change.

Bicycle and Pedestrian Program

The Bicycle & Pedestrian Program of the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Human and Natural Environment, promotes bicycle and pedestrian transportation accessibility, use, and safety.

Safe Routes To School (SRTS)

The purpose of the Safe Routes To School (SRTS) Program is to empower communities to make walking and bicycling to school a safe and routine activity once again. The Program makes funding available for a wide variety of programs and projects, from building safer street crossings to establishing programs that encourage children and their parents to walk and bicycle safely to school. While not specifically addressed through this program, decisions about where to locate new schools or renovate existing schools, particularly in more traditional, walkable neighborhoods, can have an enormous impact on facilitating the likelihood of students walking or biking to school.

Access Management

Access management is the proactive management of vehicular access points to land parcels adjacent to all manner of roadways. Access management encompasses a set of techniques that state and local governments can use to control access to highways, major arterials, and other roadways. The benefits of access management include improved movement of traffic, reduced crashes, and fewer vehicle conflicts.

Transportation Enhancements Program

The Transportation Enhancement Program funds projects that better integrate transportation into communities. Eligible Transportation Enhancement projects include bicycle and pedestrian facilities, historic preservation, and landscaping and scenic beautification along streets,gateways, waterfronts and highways.

Context-sensitive solutions

Context sensitive solutions (CSS) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders to develop a transportation facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic, historic, and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and mobility.

Scenario Planning

Scenario Planning provides a framework for developing a shared vision for the future by analyzing various forces (e.g., health, transportation, economic, environmental, land use, etc.) that affect the community. The website provides noteworthy practices and innovative uses of Scenario Planning applications for transportation planning, and will allow you to explore other Scenario Planning resources.

Visualization in Planning

Visualization in Planning has advanced recently due to new technology in communication processes. Providing visual images to a broader audience has become easy, fast and of high quality. Visualization can provide the public and decision makers a clear idea of the proposed policies, plans and Transportation Improvement Programs and the impacts to the human and natural environment. Visuals can make information instantly or intuitively understandable. The new technology has made it possible to visually communicate what the proposals may look like if and when implemented.

Tools and Analytical Methods

Tool Kit for Integrating Land Use and Transportation: The objective of this tool kit is to provide a user-friendly, web-based source of methods, strategies, and procedures for integrating land use and transportation planning, decision-making, and project implementation.

Toolbox for Regional Policy Analysis - A toolbox of analytical methods for testing the regional impacts of transportation and land use policies.

Other Related Transportation Programs/Activities

Integrating Health and Physical Activity

US DOT research on how land use and transportation systems affect options available for physical activity.
Information provided by the Centers for Disease Control Prevention (CDC) on the connections between walking, bicycling, urban design, and healthy lifestyles.

Linking Land Use, Environmental Issues, and Transportation in Project Development

Community Impact Assessment - An iterative process of understanding potential impacts of proposed transportation investments on communities.
Planning and Environment Linkages - The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) have developed legal and program guidance on how information, analysis, and products from metropolitan and statewide transportation planning processes can be incorporated into and relied upon in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process under existing Federal statutes and regulations.

Public Involvement, Outreach, and Participation

In the transportation decision-making process, public involvement is a key component of integrating land use and transportation issues. FHWA's role in this arena includes:

Providing best practices in public involvement;
Articulating the benefits of early and continuous public involvement;
Providing training, peer exchanges, workshops and technical assistance; and
Demonstrating public involvement strategies that have been effective with traditionally underserved populations.

Public Participation / Public Involvement

Public participation is more than just a hearing, or one meeting near the end of the project development process. Public involvement needs to be an early and continuing part of the transportation and project development process. It is essential that the project sponsor knows the community's values in order to avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts, as well as to narrow the field of alternatives (for planning) and alignments (for projects).

Transportation System Management and Operations

Linking transportation planning and operations improves transportation systems management and operations across a region and can reduce the demand for capacity expansion and reduce delay, congestion, and environmental impacts.