Project Description

During the past few years, the NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management has completed numerous research projects in transportation, ranging from on-street parking policy and management, to highway and street issues, to context sensitive solutions, to intelligent transportation systems. One thing common to the findings of the work for each of these diverse areas was the need for more effective coordination on transportation and land use issues within the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) region between New York City and the suburban counties to its north and east, and among the suburban counties themselves.

While there is agreement on the need for regional approaches to such issues as highway congestion, land use, increased freight traffic, and transportation operations more broadly, effective mechanisms for fostering coordination on such issues are still lacking in many cases. Further, this is a concern that other metropolitan areas also continue to grapple with around the country. When asked about on-street parking policies, for example, representatives from Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC suggested that better collaboration was needed with suburban areas which often fail to realize that policies undertaken in the suburbs can have negative affects on their urban neighbors

The Rudin Center is engaged in a year-long research initiative that will identify and describe the nature of the obstacles to effective urban-suburban and suburban-suburban coordination in transportation and land use; assess the specific areas related to transportation land use where such coordination is most urgently needed; benchmark practices in the region with what select metropolitan areas are doing elsewhere around the country to better coordinate efforts in transportation and land use across jurisdictional lines; and identify best practices and specific practical ways that they could be implemented in the NYMTC region. This project shall support the goals of the NYMTC Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) in several ways. Most directly, a seamless ?state-of-the-art? regional transportation system necessitates effective coordination throughout the region and recognition that land use and operational decisions taken in one area can effect another location within the region. Further, finding ways to better coordinate effects shall aid in harmonizing the transportation system with its surroundings.

The purpose of this project is to:

• Identify and describe the nature of obstacles to effective urban-suburban and suburban-suburban coordination in transportation and land use
• Assess the specific areas related to transportation and land use where such coordination is most urgently needed. Among these might be, for example, implementation of new technologies across county lines or bus rapid transit within the region
• Benchmark practices in this region with what select metropolitan areas are doing elsewhere around the country to better coordinate efforts in transportation and land use across jurisdictional lines
• Identify best practices and specific practical ways that they could be implemented in the NYMTC region