provided services, both auto and transit, into a genuine system. Too frequently we now find many State, county, city, metropolitan, and special purpose authorities working in a single metro sometimes in competition and usually in complete independence. There is seldom a single responsible agency even within the central city, and there is a lack of public awareness of the significance of these political boundaries:

When you drive or ride in the Los Angeles metropolitan area you may cross one of a half dozen political boundaries. To motorists these are imaginary lines of which the existence is scarcely known. But to traffic management officials these boundaries are very real indeed. They set limits on authority. These lines on the map determine where one set of law ends and another begins. They serve to fix financial responsibility. These imaginary lines can loom up as real traffic barriers. They can be just as big and just as bothersome as we permit them to be.

We must gear our governmental organization to the automotive and freeway age, and our working relationships to realities. Traffic moves without regard to political boundaries, and traffic service to be fully effective must be on the same basis. The Los Angeles metropolitan area is one community from the social and economic standpoint. Yet this unity is not recognized in matters of highway

transportation.87

(3) Our many political jurisdictions act to prevent a system approach: The multiple agency, multiple jurisdiction problem is very extensively documented in the individual city reports. Appendix B contains this documentation. Our metros are struggling, with a few exceptions, to plan and finance transportation facilities with a system of State, county, city, village, and district jurisdictions which originated in an age of unspecialized, rural, self-supporting, and selfdeterminative society which used horses for transportation. This society has almost ceased to exist and is far removed from present urban realities. The Committee for Economic Development (CED) succinctly states the case in their August 1960 report, Guiding Metropolitan Growth:

Neither the collection of municipalities and small special-service districts, nor the areawide agencies, nor the State and Federal agencies devoted to meeting a single need are able to formulate effective governmental policies for the metropolitan area as a whole. Decisions as to area wide priorities are made by conflict among these special purpose, regionwide, and higher level agencies **. The net effects of our fractionated metropolitan governmental system thus are the retention of control in small local units over those public services which can be provided and paid for at the local level, the gradual loss of local control over those basic areawide services which are essential to modern urban living, and the absence of a system for establishing priorities and allocating resources on a rational, area wide basis. * * * The present course is leading to a greater loss of self-determination in local affairs through the continuous transfer of responsibility to the State and Federal Governments. (Pp. 29, 30, 43.)

(4) Alternative solutions for the multiple-jurisdiction problem: The CED calls for a reformulation of metropolitan government for meeting the major communal needs. No single system is proposed and a discussion of the several alternatives is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, we note that the many individual city transportation reports almost uniformly call for the formation of an areawide special purpose authority with a full range of powers. The collective opinion is that no other option will produce effective and

88

87 Ibid., p. 364.

8 For suggestions, see the fifth footnote in app. K, herein, p. 632.

reasonably prompt action, yet there is practically no case in the United States where such an authority has been formed. It is clear that the authority is a device subject to interim as well as permanent use and it may play an important role while the necessary recasting of metropolitan administration and control is being accomplished. The latter process will almost certainly require many years.

Due to the importance of the authority, or competent agency, and the difficulties of forming such an agency on a metrowide basis even for such limited purposes as planning, the committee's staff made a careful study of the several means by which Federal aid to this formation might be exercised. At present the "workable program" concept and other broad standards are applied by some of the housing and home finance agencies in administering their programs. These standards require formation of specifically limited public agencies. The same standard was applied in S. 3278, the mass transportation loan legislation.

A further step is proposed in S. 3877, 86th Congress, 2d session, wherein a metropolitan regional planning commission is required as a prerequisite to the continued application of Federal-aid highway funds within standard metropolitan areas. The latter bill also provides for the financing of these commissions from the planning funds set aside in the allocation of Federal construction funds to the States. These metropolitan planning commissions would not have a veto power but would actively participate in regional highway planning in order to assure serving the best interests of the metro and its future development. Recommendations not accepted by the State highway departments would be referred to the Bureau of Public Roads in Washington for final action.

We lack experience with either of these approaches in the transportation field. Such devices to aid and encourage the formation of competent metro agencies should be tried at the earliest possible time. They will undoubtedly be successful in some jurisdictions. However the present evidence is that additional powers may be needed in many cases and such an exercise would lead into new fields of Federabendeavor. In an effort to stimulate the thinking of concerned bodies about possible future uses of Federal effort in securing competent metro agencies, an analysis of the legal problems inherent in such action was made by the committee's staff. The results of this work are presented in appendix K to this chapter.

The goal of this staff effort was to explore the possibility of forming a competent metrowide agency by initial use of Federal powers and yet retain a maximum of local control and problem-solving ability. This device would avoid the numerous legal and constitutional problems at the State and local level which in many States are very great stumbling blocks to positive local action. We are examining the use of Federal powers for this purpose because many other organizations are, and have been, attempting to develop workable patterns of city, county or State action. No other organization is as well situated as this committee to explore such uses of Federal legislative powers.

The metropolitan agency suggested in appendix K would be responsible for the supply of all the important means for moving people within the metro. This would include fixed facilities, the

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control of traffic, and the regulation or operations of public transport. This appears to be a broad responsibility compared to our present scattered delegations but serious students of this subject are unanimously agreed that this is the general direction in which we must move. Such jurisdiction does not, of course, have to be completed in one stroke. After foundation of a competent agency the responsibilities for each segment of the system may be assumed on a gradual basis, and on the priority of need for action other than planning.

(5) Financing public facilities and services: The governmental patchwork in our metros provides a hodgepodge of financing similar to the hodgepodge we observe in the facilities. Expedience, frustration before legal complexities, and local independence and inadequacy in financial matters have helped to bring about conditions wherein a large portion of suburban commuting has been subsidized. That is the individual passengers have not paid directly the full cost of their transportation. This has produced chronic "underfinancing" of urban transportation facilities.

Railroad commuters, as clearly established earlier, very seldom paid a fare that covered the full costs of the service and in many cases the fare did not cover the out-of-pocket costs. The difference has been made up from other railroad revenues, primarily from freight. The section of this chapter on State and local action to keep trains running, 2b, mentions several cases of direct payments to railroads by these governments within the past 2 years.

Private transit companies were profitable for many years but these profits declined because of the postwar revenue-expense squeeze and falling traffic. This brought widespread grants of tax relief and other local public actions to absorb a portion of the expenses of these companies. Available data shows that the majority of the publicly owned transit systems do not cover full costs with revenues. Thus in recent years transit passengers have not, particularly in the larger cities, paid the full cost of their transportation.

While the total taxes levied on motor vehicles appear to equal the total cost of providing roads, streets, and traffic control, the methods of collecting and distributing these funds have resulted in failure to directly cover full costs in specific cases. The result has been that cities must provide arterial facilities, heavily used by suburban commuters, partly through taxes from other sources such as city property owners. John A. Bailey, deputy managing director of Philadelphia, states:

It is estimated that the city of (Philadelphia) alone subsidizes the street system by nearly $18 million a year from general taxes beyond those levied on automobiles. The total subsidy is even more than that. In addition to these figures, I include $4 million for the 850 traffic police (out of our 5,000-man force) and 30 percent of the overhead on street and police expenditures. This makes the total $27 million. This subsidy of $27 million per year is approximately $50 per car per year, about 8 percent of the city's general fund budget. In other cities it is substantially higher. For example, Milwaukee is spending $90 and Chicago $85 per year per car. In San Diego, which depends almost entirely on automobile transportation, even though the highway department has built so many freeways out of State highway funds, the auto receives 17 percent

89 U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Compendium of City Government Finances (Annual)."

of the general fund budget (with only 3 percent from the gasoline taxes rebated by the State).

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The opinion has been expressed that the taxes collected from fuel used over the relatively short but extremely costly approaches to the central districts of our larger cities do not cover the cost of providing these facilities, especially the tunnels and bridges where tolls are not charged. The high volume of traffic does not offset the short distances over which taxable fuel is consumed.

Thus one of the public problems is that people are not adjusted to paying the full costs of commutation and do not even think of the full cost to them of private auto use. (Depreciation and fixed annual costs must be added to get a full cost figure.) There is a lack of understanding of how total public and private costs are actually covered, on the one hand, and high resistance to increases in direct charges or taxes on the other hand. Planners and administrators are going to have to rationalize the financing of urban transportation and move in the direction of making the entire operation selfsustaining.

(6) Metropolitan resources and know-how can meet the genuine needs of the area: That our metropolitan areas have the inherent ability to pay for any service they need is shown by any of the measures of wealth and tax production. If such U.S. suburban counties as Fairfield, Conn., Westchester, N.Y., Montgomery, Pa., and Montgomery, Md., cannot, together with their respective central cities, afford necessary public services it is safe to say that no place anywhere in the world can afford them. The factor which is needed but does not exist is the governmental framework for applying total metropolitan resources to problems affecting all of the metro area.

Transport planners and operators must aim for a price-service combination that will meet with public acceptance. Service must include comforts such as air conditioning, a minimum of standing, and frequent, fast schedules for public transportation. Service for autos includes relief from congestion, a minimum of traffic signals, and adequate well located parking facilities. It may be necessary to increase the direct charges on autos to provide this result.

Philadelphia experienced rail traffic increases following fare reductions and frequency stepups which shows that if the price-service package is attractive enough drivers will leave their cars. The package can be made much more attractive through modern air-conditioned equipment with high acceleration and deceleration capabilities. The recent plans for modern rapid transit systems in Los Angeles, Calif.,91 and Atlanta, Ga., reveal some additional "bait" that planners and operators may use. Both plans call for continuously moving cars on belts for distribution of transit passengers in the central business district. The so-called carveyor system is convenient and comfortable. Both plans would be elevated above the street. Since the structures are relatively small and light they are not large. The Atlanta system would operate in a transparent, air-conditioned enclosure.

90 Transportation in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Region," an address before the Community Leadership Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, May 19, 1959. App. I, reference 9a, p. 630.

92 App. I, reference 1a, p. 629.

Operating subsidy during the early years of the regeneration of transit appears to be a necessity. This is a very moderate price to pay for relief from unnecessary urban expressway and parking construction. Indeed Prof. L. L. Waters of Indiana University has argued 93 that the least expensive solution to the commutation problem would be for the authorities to provide the service free to the public. This would move the largest number of people by the most economical and efficient means. He argues that—

(a) Large subsidies are involved to provide present facilities and services;

(b) The highway portion is becoming an outstanding public burden:

(c) The total public and private cost could be reduced and public satisfaction achieved by giving away the service "free"; and,

(d) The cost should be collected through charges or taxes more palatable to the public.

7. Land use planning must be the foundation of urban transportation planning

Urban transportation and land use have very profound effects one upon the other. Land use places requirements on transportation. Transportation opens land for planned and unplanned uses. Urban land is a scarce and valuable public asset and should not be subverted or reduced in potential value by poor or no planning. Land use planning must be a prerequisite to transportation planning,

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The impact of improved transportation access on land use is everywhere evident. The strip growth of mixed commercial uses along major intercity routes, the building of new industrial plants along multilane belt roads in the larger metros, and the spread of housing development along almost any hard surfaced road are vivid illustrations of the power of the highway over land use. Suburban steam and interurban electric railroads pioneered the spread of housing developments. Lack of control over land development has allowed too many mixed and wasteful usages which do not meet planning standards. The proper balance and separation of such urban land uses as residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, recreational, and agricultural is vitally important in the long-term development of the metro. The past and present effects of transportation on land use are widely discussed in current reports:

Chicago (reference No. 8):

95

Why has the Chicago area developed in this particular fashion? One reason is the raw fact of growth itself. From a small settlement at the mouth of the Chicago River, the urbanized area has grown out steadily in all directions * * *. Growth has been horizontal rather than vertical because it evidently has been found cheaper in this area to absorb new lands into urban uses rather than to build up into the air. With faster and more versatile transportation provided by the automobile, agricultural and vacant lands are being absorbed at an increasing rate and at lower densities.

The form of this horizontal expansion has been shaped by transportation, even from earliest times. Horse cars and cable cars on State Street accelerated growth southward in the period 1860-75. The suburban railroad lines created

Business Horizons, October 1959, School of Business Administration, University of Indiana, article entitled "Free Transit." Already noted on p. 587.

95 See app. I herein for identification of "references" cited, p. 629.