Bay Area Transportation Decision Making in the Wake of ISTEA: Planning Styles in Conflict at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission

This is a study of the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s (MTC) transportation decision making process after the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991. This innovative federal legislation promised to make transportation policy at state and regional levels more flexible across modes and more participatory among a wider range of players. MTC was one of the first Metropolitan Planning Organizations off the mark in implementing this legislation, setting up a Bay Area Partnership of all the transportation providers and key regulators in the region to work collaboratively to come up with plans and policies. This innovative effort offered an excellent opportunity for learning about the potential for and obstacles to change in transportation policy making. In particular it offered us the opportunity to look at what seemed a new model of collaborative decision making across agencies and jurisdictions.