In an interview with the NY Transportation Journal, NY State transportation commissioner Joseph Boardman says that "one of the important things we found in the statewide master plan hearings we conducted this summer (MTR #467) was the level of interest and discussion on land use planning in every community." The commissioner discussed how transportation assets can become overwhelmed by unintended consequences — not a bad way to characterize the region’s many roads inundated by traffic generated by car-dependent development.

We hope NY State DOT will follow the example now being set by Commissioner Jack Lettiere and New Jersey DOT, which is aggressively looking at future land uses in many corridors in the Garden State, and moving away from the idea that reflexively widening congested roads will lead to sustainable traffic relief. Lettiere is making an address at the Voorhees Transportation Center on integrating transportation and land use planning on Monday (Dec. 6) in New Brunswick at 1 p.m. (see http://policy.rutgers.edu/vtc/ ). There are certainly many road corridors on Long Island, in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere in NY State that would benefit from coordinated, forward-looking planning.

Commissioner Boardman also said NY’s master plan hearings heard much on the need for inter-city passenger services and on shifting as much freight as possible from highway to rail. The master plan panel’s recommendations to NYS DOT and other state agencies are not yet public. The NY Transportation Journal is published by NYU’s Rudin Transportation Center. 

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