There was little followup of the Hershey Conference. The findings and recommendations were sound and far-reaching, the report was well prepared and widely distributed. But there was no group with muscle to get behind the promotion of the results of Hershey as did the AMA–AASHO Committee in the case of Sagamore. And the professional groups, the predominant participants at Hershey could, even had they tried, have had little impact on the official agencies, State or local, unless they were receptive.
Transition into the “post-’62” period was not difficult. Passage of the Act, of course, brought immediate acceleration of planning effort by the States, for the effective date of the application of the requirements of the Act, July 1, 1965, was less than 3 years from the date of its enactment. The first step in implementing the Act was to spell out the planning requirements that it placed on the States and the local communities. The wording of the Act, that its intent was to encourage the development of long-range plans and programs, made clear that the cooperation between the State highway departments and the local communities must be evidenced by agreement between the highway departments and those in the local communities who had responsibility, the elected officials, for committing those communities to a program. This interpretation left many city planners unhappy, for they had generally been responsible to planning commissions which were often independent of the local elected officials. But they generally had no commitment authority. How the States were to come into agreement with the multitude of local jurisdictions in the larger areas presented real problems, but the means, differing in one way or another, were reached in all areas.
As to the technical requirements for a planning process adequate to meet the intent of the Act, the Bureau of Public Roads turned to the AMA–AASHO Committee as representatives of the State and local communities for advice and assistance. The Committee designated a small task group to work with the Bureau, and after much deliberation and testing among knowledgable people in both associations, a BPE Instructional Memorandum was distributed in March 1963. Because of the thoroughgoing writing and rewriting of this memorandum, it still stands with only minor modifications, as the basic urban transportation planning document. [1] It is perhaps not amiss to recall that it provided specifically that attention be given to social and community value factors—preservation, enhancement, and extension of parks and open space, preservation of historic buildings and sites, avoidance of disruption of neighborhoods, and appearance of the facility both from the viewpoints of its users and its neighbors—all items brought out at the Hershey Conference.
The need for rapid expansion of the planning process across the Nation led to the employment of consultants for the basic data collection and processing in many areas. And it required the rapid formation of policy committees or groups by other names, representing the States and the local communities in each urban area, complicated by the fact that many urban areas extended across State lines. As a result most of the policy direction was by ad hoc groups, hopefully to be superseded by more permanent organizations.
The Second National Conference on Highways and Urban Development
Under these circumstances, the most remarkable achievement in planning ever seen in this country was developed. Along with the development of the machinery to administer the process came striking advances in technology and in data processing equipment that produced a degree of sophistication in planning techniques that perhaps outran the ability to administer it. By 1965 all but a handful of the then 233 urbanized areas had qualified to meet the terms of the Act. It was against this backdrop that the Second National Conference on Highways and Urban Development was held in December 1965 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The Williamsburg Conference was the direct result of the concern within the AMA–AASHO Committee that plans, then in the formulation stage, be converted into programs and the recognition that the issue of evaluating social and community values and relating transportation plans and programs to them had not been met. At its meeting in November 1964, the Committee agreed to hold a conference to review the state-of-the-art and recommend courses of action for the future and to invite the National Association of County Officials to join the other two groups as an official sponsor. The Federal Highway Administrator expressed strong support for the idea and instructed the Director of Planning of the Bureau of Public Roads to find the necessary funds. This he did, half within his own budget and half from the Automotive Safety Foundation, which once again not only provided financial support but also the near full-time assignment of the Assistant to the President to aid in organizing the conference and producing the report. The objectives of the Conference as spelled out by the sponsors were as follows:
To identify community values, goals, and objectives; and to explore how development of transportation systems can serve to enhance values and aid in reaching goals and objectives.
To evaluate and recommend alternative arrangements for the organization, administration, and financing of the cooperative continuing transportation planning function within multi-jurisdictional areas.
To recommend methods and procedures for converting cooperatively developed plans for interrelated systems of transportation in urban areas into improvement programs of state, county, and municipal governments.[2]
The Conference was particularly significant in the degree to which the official agencies assumed responsibility for its conduct. The Steering Committee comprised the executive directors of the three Associations—A. E. Johnson for AASHO, Patrick Healy for AMA (now National League of Cities) and Bernard Hillenbrand for NACO. The Bureau of Public Roads provided the Chairman of the Steering Committee (and of the Conference itself) in the person of the Director of Planning of BPR and the Committee secretary. ASF provided the Conference secretary. Each executive director presided over one of the three full-day working sessions.
Of the 74 participants, nearly half were there as official designees of the sponsoring association. The others constituted a good cross section of other profes-
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