American Transportation Policy and Urban Development

American transportation policy
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Table of Content
1 Front page ………………………………………………………………..1
2 Table of content…………………………………………………………..2
3 Introduction and Body (American transportation policy) ………….……3
4 Conclusion………………………………………………………….…….9
5 References………………………………………………….…………….11
American transportation policy
The policies in the American transport sector; air, water and ground transportation reflects the trends in the institutional arrangements, national politics, and the cultures of the national politics. The transportation policies are set with the aim to secure the future of the Americans. It is an essential moment for America and its commitment to the infrastructural transportation. The National Highway System exists but it does not meet all the needs, and it is deteriorating. The subsequent bills on transportation must tackle the several challenges that face the nation such as rising costs, crippling commutes, lack of options, wasteful spending, and economic development in the rural and urban communities (Jenkins & Williams, 1949).
The current administration is preparing to debate the subsequent bill, American transportation department offers a guidebook for referral for the existing programs and policies, and their historical and political background and other issues that many stakeholders trust that must be tackled in the subsequent bill. The guidebook has six subdivisions that include the history of the policies of the federal transportation, distribution and collection of revenues and funding. The working system of the current federal program, the implementation of the federal policies at the different level of the government, process reauthorization, and the future policies of the federal transport sector (Knopf, 1918).
Over several decades, the interest federal government in transportation has been changing to respond to the economic growth, new opportunities, and shifting demands of travel. The article, I of the Constitution of the United States, articulates the significance of interstate commerce and permits the Congress to control these activities. The evolution of the network of transportation has caused balancing evolution in the American towns, cities and neighborhoods. Street compact patterns, buildings oriented, and the traditions of the people walking on foot started to change in the early times of the twentieth century when trucks and cars began reshaping of the landscapes. As electrified trolleys and car ownership grew and became increasingly critical to the growth of suburbs, on the other hand, there was increasing the importance of the transportation system for connection to places and people within cities of America (Mészáros, 2012).
In 1941, Roosevelt, who was the president, appointed the Committee of the National Interregional Highway. The committee proposed several recommendations for a "Defense Highways and Interstate National System" That established the birth of the Act of Federal-Aid Highway in 1944. The roles of the federal government in the building of the highway grew exponentially with the establishment of the program for Interstate in the era of 1950s. The Act of 1956 for Defense and Interstate Highways, also known as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 appropriated $19 billion to build 42,000 miles highway with multi-lanes, and Highways with limited access.
The original intention of the system was to link states and connects economic centers together, the system of Interstate radically evolved the development pattern and travel within the American cities and towns while helping in the facilitation of booming growth in the suburban areas of the nation. Almost eighty percent of the federal money was used in the building of the urban highways, and no comparable program was there for networking of the non-highway or transportation of the public. The systems of the Transit struggled to compete with those of the highway program that are subsidized. Efforts in securing the support for the federal transit started in 1960, and the mayors of cities were leading because they felt the deterioration of the commuter systems. All the mayors of the cities were stressing on the need for modernization of the transit systems that was antique and stemming the decline in the central cities (Wittke, 1943).
The Congress gave the Urban Development and the Housing Department the responsibility of taking care of the public transportation. Congress was demonstrating grants and authorized loans through the Act of Mass Transportation in Urban, hesitantly in 1963 and considerably in 1969 with a long-term, authority of contract of not less than $20 billion over a period of twelve years. The new program could offer grants of capital for up to forty-five percent of the transit capital cost improvements.
In the early 1980s, the Congress took the steps to unify all the highways, transportation and transit safety programs under the Act of Assistance of Surface Transportation in 1982. The move of unifying the highways was because of the support of President Reagan and good leadership that raised the tax on gas from four to nine cents and additional dedication of one cent per gallon of gas solely for the program of public transit for the first time.
The Interstate network system as initially conceived was finished in 1991 and restricted to 45,000 miles. In 1991, the Congress passed another Act for the Efficiency of transportation in the Intermodal Surface that changed the overall program to enable a great flexibility in the selection of the project and expansion of the number of programs. The Act allowed the Congress to recognize the necessity to shift past the narrow objective to build the system of interstate highway, but following bills have fallen short of articulating clear objectives of the nation to guide the investments of the federal.
For a transportation firm to achieve the goal of successful transport in America, the firm will consider the strategies to overcome the Porter’s five forces in transport. The forces are the risk of entry by potential competitors, bargaining power of the suppliers, threats of substitutes, bargaining power of the buyer and the intensity of the existing firms in the transport industry.
The pressure from rivalry firms will depend on several factors such as the conditions of demand and the cost of services. The structure of the competitive firms and the differentiation of the p...