July 3, 2025
While the planning field and the region itself has evolved over the years, DVRPC’s purpose and commitment to Greater Philadelphia has remained the same.
This summer marks DVRPC’s 60th anniversary. Since 1965, DVRPC has been responsible for carrying out “continuing, comprehensive, coordinated transportation and regional planning,” as defined in the Inter-state Compact between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the State of New Jersey. While the planning field and the region itself has evolved over the years, DVRPC’s purpose and commitment to Greater Philadelphia has remained the same.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey first recognized the need to look at transportation regionally and across state boundaries in the 1950s, consistent with transportation trends across the country. In 1959, the states established the Penn Jersey Transportation Study and set the foundation for regional planning for Greater Philadelphia. Following the 1962 Federal-Aid Highway Act, which established the “continuing, comprehensive, coordinated” transportation planning process, the two states came together again to establish DVRPC to meet this requirement, first by an act of PA legislation, and in 1967, NJ approved companion legislation, formalizing our bi-state compact.
DVRPC has seen a lot of changes over the last six decades as attitudes and approaches to transportation planning have evolved. While earlier work of the organization focused on expanding roadway networks and building interstate highways, today, the shared regional transportation priorities focus on maintaining our existing transportation assets, improving roadway safety, and reducing crash-related fatalities, and addressing congestion bottlenecks in a coordinated, multimodal, data-driven congestion management process that promotes transit, pedestrian, and bicycle-related strategies.
DVRPC also continues to engage in a breadth of regional planning topics. In 2022, DVRPC received Economic Development District (EDD) status from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to facilitate the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) and connect transportation, economic development, and land use. To help confront the region’s housing affordability crisis, in 2024, DVRPC created the Housing Submarkets tool to help establish a common understanding of complex housing issues in support of municipal actions. Since 2009, DVRPC has been working to build out The Circuit, a planned 800 mile network of off-street bicycle and pedestrian trails with over 400 miles of the network in place today. Achieving our regional goals would not be possible without a robust transit system, which DVRPC supports through data and analysis, transit fund programming, and regional partner convenings. These are just a few of the ways that 60 years later, DVRPC continues to benefit the whole region through a holistic, data-driven, regional approach to supporting the region’s 350 communities.
View DVRPC’s 60th Anniversary timeline, which includes national events that have influenced regional milestones.