Planning Hard or Hardly Planning?

This post had a bit of thinking about how smart it is to be forward thinking in your transportation planning. Well today in the Salt Lake City Tribune it seems like in a plan for a new 8 lane freeway they didn't look at whether it would be prudent to reserve space for transit. They only looked at as the articles states...

But Wasatch Front Regional Council staffers, who are updating the agency's long-range transportation plan, only evaluated which mode of transportation - vehicle or transit - would get people to their destinations the quickest, said council executive director Chuck Chappell. That means streetcars or BRT wouldn't be cost-effective, he said.

Wouldn't be cost effective? What does the cost effectiveness of a reservation for future transit and smart transportation planning have to do with planning for a freeway? Well it does have to do with cars and auto-centricity that seems to be prolific around the country. At least the press is smart enough to pick up on the highway good ole boy network that still persists at regional and state DOTs. Perhaps because of the heads up it will change during the meetings and final planning.