Transportation Concurrency: Florida’s Example

Abstract

The Florida Local Government Comprehensive Planning and Land Development Act of 1985 called for local communities to develop concurrency-management systems that ensure that public facilities and services, including transportation, whose purpose is to support development, shall be available “concurrent with the impacts of such development.” Although most local communities have been implementing concurrency requirements since their comprehensive plans were approved in the early 1990s, little empirical research has been completed to document how the concurrency requirements have been implemented. Florida and Washington are the only states to require local governments to implement transportation concurrency as a form of adequate public-facilities requirements. The effectiveness of such policies for planners in other states and local municipalities throughout the United States is documented. The results of interviews with policymakers and planners in 25 metropolitan planning organizations in Florida are presented. The interviews were conducted on the subject of implementation of concurrency-management areas and transportation concurrency-exception areas. The concurrency-management process is outlined, and benefits and criticisms of the concurrency-management system are discussed in light of interviews, a review of the statutes, and observations of the Transportation and Land Use Study Committee.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Porter

Managing Growth in America’s Communities. Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1997.

Kelly

E. D.

Managing Community Growth: Policies, Techniques, and Impacts. Praeger, Westport, Conn., 1993.

Pendall

R. J.

Residential Growth Controls and Racial and Ethnic Diversity: Making and Breaking the Chain of Exclusion. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley, Calif., 1995.

Pelham

Adequate Public-Facilities Requirements: Reflections on Florida’s Concurrency System for Managing Growth. Florida State University Law Review, Vol. 19, 1992, pp. 973–1052.

Transportation Land Use Study Committee (TLUSC). Final Report. Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, Fla., Jan. 15, 1999.

Audirac

, O’Dell

, and Shermyen

. Concurrency-Management Systems in Florida: A Catalog and Analysis. Monograph 7. Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Florida, Gainesville, 1992.

Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR). The Role of Level-of-Service Standards in Florida’s Growth-Management Goals. The University of South Florida Center for Urban Transportation, Tampa, 1993.

Rhodes

R. M.

Concurrency: Problems, Practicalities, and Prospects. Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, Vol. 6, 1991, pp. 241–54.

White

S.M.

Adequate Public-Facilities Ordinances and Transportation Management. Planning Advisory Service Report 465, American Planning Association, Chicago, Ill., Aug. 1996.

10.

Boggs

H. G.

, and Apgar

R. C.

. Concurrency and Growth Management: Lawyer’s Primer. Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, Vol. 7, Fall 1991, pp. 1–22.

11.

Robertson

C. A.

Concurrency and Its Relation to Growth Management. Nova Law Review, Vol. 20, Winter 1996, pp. 891–917.

12.

Powell

Recent Changes in Concurrency. Florida Bar Journal, Nov. 1994.

13.

Highway Capacity Manual. 3d ed. TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1985.

14.

Highway Capacity Manual Update. 3d ed., 3d rev. TRB, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1997.

15.

Level of Service Handbook, Florida Department of Transportation Systems Planning Office, Tallahassee, Fla., 1998.

16.

Schnidman

, and Baker

R. L.

. Planning for Platted Lands: Land Use Remedies for Lot Sale Subdivisions. Florida State University Law Review, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall 1983.

17.

Longman

P. Sprawl

. Florida Trend, Dec. 1994, pp. 31–34.

18.

Denslow

Highway and Economic Development in Florida. Economic Leaflets, Vol. 50, No. 3, Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla., March 1991.

19.

Steiner

R. L.

Trip Generation and Parking Requirements in Traditional Shopping Districts. In Transportation Research Record 1617, 1998, pp. 28–37.

20.

Downs

Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion. The Brookings Institute, Washington, D.C., 1992.

21.

Innes

J. E.

Group Processes and the Social Construction of Growth Management: Florida, Vermont, and New Jersey. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 58, No. 4, Autumn 1992, pp. 440–53.