Policy Strategies for Iowa in Making Major Road Investments

This monograph was designed as a practical guide to assist policy-makers at the Iowa Department of Transportation in pursuing policy objectives through transportation investments. It looks at how the state can best deploy available resources to achieve priority policy objectives. Focusing on road investments, by far the largest category of transportation projects, we examine this goal in the context of three primary issues: economic development, sustainable urban growth and development, and social equity. The analysis presented in this monograph is not intended to be prescriptive. Rather, we raise a series of policy-relevant issues and suggest how various sorts of transportation investments can affect them. Our objective is to facilitate informed debate, not to propose firm solutions to the issues discussed.