“Rather than adding broader regional considerations for the better,” says an op ed in yesterday’s Washington Examiner, metropolitan planning organizations have “empowered narrower parochial interests for the worse.” The writer is dealing specifically with the transportation planning organization for the Washington, DC, area, but his comments are valid for any of the hundreds of metropolitan planning organizations around the U.S.
Washington’s dysfunctional transportation system.
Flickr photo by magandafille.
For those unfamiliar with the term, “metropolitan planning organizations” or MPOs were created by federal decree in the 1960s. Basically, agencies giving out housing and transportation grants didn’t want to have to deal with separate grant proposals from each of the 20,000 or so cities and counties in the country. So they ordered all metropolitan areas — then about 250, now more than 400 — to form MPOs that would submit grant proposals for metro regions as a whole and then allocate the funds to local governments in those regions.
