The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 marked a shift in US transportation policy away from highway building toward a more flexible, multimodal approach as the interstate system neared completion. It gave metropolitan planning organisations greater authority and funding flexibility to shift money between highways and transit, walking and cycling. The act tied transportation funding more closely to land use, air quality and local priorities. It set the framework that successor laws would extend.
ISTEA empowered metropolitan planning organisations and began redirecting federal transportation policy from highways toward multimodal, locally steered investment.
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