June 3, 2015

The Kennedy Administration, brief though it was, saw some significant developments in trying to develop a coherent national transportation policy, and President Kennedy also got the ball rolling on federal funding for urban planning and for urban mass transit.

This week’s Document of the Week is a June 1961 memo to President Kennedy from the head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency transmitting the draft legislation to give permission for two or more states to establish joint planning organizations for urban areas, to ensure that federal housing planning grants could be used for transportation planning, and to provide the first federal demonstration grants for mass transit.

A variation of the proposed language was enacted into law in section 310 of the Housing Act of 1961 (Public Law 87-70).