Cooperative Planning of Metropolitan Transportation Facilities

The need for cooperation in the planning of metropolitan trans­ portation facilities has taken on added significance as a result of the Interstate Road Program with its emphasis on arterial improvement in urban areas. A meeting to discuss this problem more fully was held in October 1958 at Syracuse University. This meeting, the National Conference on Highways and Urban Redevelopment (more commonly known as the Sagamore Conference), was attended by leading highway officials, mayors, public works directors, city planners, traffic engineers, and business and civic leaders. The conference report noted that “more than half of the interstate highway system funds under the huge Federal Road Modernization Program w ill be spent in urban areas,” and that this “has served to alert the nation to the critical need for a coordinated approach to the closely related problems of urban transportation and community develop­ ment.” Included in the findings of the conference were recommenda­ tions that: (1 ) state highway departments should work cooperatively and effectively with local authorities in planning, designing, construct­ ing, and operating streets and highways in urban areas; (2 ) that local governments, in fulfilling their responsibility should prepare a compre­ hensive plan for the physical development of the community embracing a land-use plan, a transportation plan including public transit, and a program of land-use controls; and (3 ) that all levels of government should strengthen their support of city and regional planning. These principles, fortunately, were recognized early in the develop­ ment of the highway program in the Detroit area. Immediately after the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Law of 1944, which for the first time provided for federal participation in the cost of highway construc­ tion within cities, the city of Detroit jointly with the State Highway Department and the Wayne County Road Commission entered into an