Articlehybrid2021

Political Partisanship and Transportation Reform

Nicholas J. Klein · Kelcie M. Ralph · Calvin G. Thigpen · Anne Brown

43 citations0/0 files storedJournal of the American Planning Association

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Transportation Planning and Optimization Electoral Systems and Political Participation Urban Transport and Accessibility

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings Support for transportation policies and investments is increasingly shaped by partisan ideals. Less well documented is the role of partisanship relative to potential mediating factors like transportation-related values, beliefs about the possibility of change, self-interest, and knowledge. We surveyed a representative sample of 600 U.S. adults about these factors, their political ideology, and their willingness to change the automobile-oriented transportation status quo. We found considerable support for change but also deep partisan divides. In exploring the pathways between partisanship and policy preferences, we found that values and beliefs about change are both deeply partisan and closely associated with policy preferences. By contrast, the results were mixed for self-interest and transportation-related knowledge. Ultimately, we found that these four pathways explain much, but not all, of the partisanship in transportation policy preferences. Very conservative respondents opposed reform efforts above and beyond what we would expect from their values, beliefs, self-interest, and knowledge, indicating continuing salience of partisanship.Takeaway for practice Our results suggest that transportation reforms enjoy broad public support in urban areas with moderate and left-leaning populaces but may struggle to win approval at the regional, state, or federal level due to partisan geographic sorting. Some planners, policymakers, and advocates may choose to embrace partisanship, but doing so may exacerbate tensions and hamper progress. Others may prefer to tackle the pathways between partisanship and preferences without deepening partisan divides. For instance, practitioners may seek to increase support for reform by tackling widespread misunderstandings about induced demand or by installing pilot projects to help the public understand that it is possible to quickly and inexpensively change infrastructure and travel.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 43 citations exist upstream.

References

1992The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion 2002Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions 2013The Rationalizing Voter 2013The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion 2021Partisanship, health behavior, and policy attitudes in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic 2010Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Issue Framing Effects 2005Party Identification and Core Political Values 2004Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion

Cited by

2023Right-wing populism and urban planning 2023Walkable Neighborhoods 2024The political price of superblocks. Electoral outcomes of sustainable transport interventions in Barcelona 2024Understanding factors influencing user engagement in incentive-based travel demand management program 2022Policy influencer support for active transportation policy in two Canadian provinces: Implications for advocacy 2022

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.