TCRP Report 42, Consequences of the Interstate Highway System for Transit: Summary of Findings, will be of interest to transportation and urban planners, local decision makers and historians. The research project examined the consequences of the interstate highway system for transit. A literature review and case studies of four metropolitan areas in the United States, four cities in Germany, and one city in Canada were done. Each of the case studies represented a different relationship between highways, transit, and urban development. The case studies tested two major hypotheses.

• First, that the interstate highway program in the United States biased transportation investments in favor of high-speed, limited-access highways, which helped make travel by automobile much more attractive than using transit.
• Second, interstate highways facilitated the suburbanization of households and firms, producing a pattern of development that is a challenge for transit to serve.

The literature review was published as TCRP Research Results Digest 21, which is available in portable document format (PDF). Double-click on the file below to access RRD 21. (A free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader is available at https://www.adobe.com.)

TCRP Research Results Digest 21

The case studies are contained in a separate report, available for loan from TCRP.

TCRP Report 42, Consequences of the Interstate Highway System for Transit: Summary of Findings, is available in portable document format (PDF). Double-click on the files below to access the report. (A free copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader is available at https://www.adobe.com.) PLEASE NOTE: Because of the very large size of these files, it may take a long time--possibly more than 1 hour collectively--to download. We regret the inconvenience.