Transportation Planning

Transportation planning is a process that plays a fundamental role in the state, region or community’s future vision by providing a comprehensive consideration of possible strategies. The process is designed to involve all community users and the general public through public participation and engagement. The process includes a number of steps including the monitoring of existing conditions, forecasting future population and employment growth, determining future transportation rquirements, developing long-range and short-range plans to address the needs and estimate the impact on the environment and community.

The transportation planning is a cooperative process and is conducted by the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the State Department of Transportation:

  • A Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is a transportation policy-making body made up of representatives from local government and transportation agencies with authority and responsibility in metropolitan planning areas. The functions of the MPO include:
    • Establish a setting: Establish and manage a fair and impartial setting for effective regional decisionmaking in the metropolitan area.
    • Identify and evaluate alternative transportation improvement options: Use data and planning methods to generate and evaluate alternatives. Planning studies and evaluations are included in the Unified Planning Work Program or UPWP.
    • Prepare and maintain a Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP): Develop and update a long-range transportation plan for the metropolitan area covering a planning horizon of at least twenty years that fosters (1) mobility and access for people and goods, (2) efficient system performance and preservation, and (3) good quality of life.
    • Develop a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP): Develop a short-range (four-year) program of transportation improvements based on the long-range transportation plan; the TIP should be designed to achieve the area's goals, using spending, regulating, operating, management, and financial tools.
    • Involve the public: Involve the general public and other affected constituencies in the four essential functions listed above
  • The Department of Transportation (DOT) is a state agency or department with official transportation planning, programming, and project implementation responsibility for that state or territory with the following primary planning functions:
    • Prepare and Maintain a Long-Range Statewide Transportation Plan: Develop and update a long-range transportation plan for the state. Plans vary from state to state and may be broad and policy-oriented, or may contain a specific list of projects.
    • Develop a Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP): Develop a program of transportation projects based on the state’s long-range transportation plan and designed to serve the state’s goals, using spending, regulating, operating, management, and financial tools. For metropolitan areas, the STIP incorporates the TIP developed by the MPO.
    • Involve the public: Involve the general public and all of the other affected constituencies in the essential functions listed above.

Limehouse Software’s uCreate provides the virtual environment that supports team collaboration for the development of the various complex documents required in transportation planning. The web-based integrated document-centric collaboration and publishing solution provides customizable shared workspaces and one-click publishing to multiple channels (including print-ready PDF, HTML and XML).

The uEngage portal provides centralized management of the entire consultation lifecycle process enabling the MPO and DOT to consult all relevant stakeholders and citizens through the widest variety of response mechanisms including:

  • Polls
  • Surveys
  • Questionnaires
  • Forums
  • Discussion boards
  • Interactive documents
  • Video

In addition, the uEngage portal becomes the single repository for all citizen comments regardless of how or where they were submitted. All comments and results are stored in a single database for analysis and reporting.