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Transportation for Communities - Advancing Projects Through Partnerships


Applications

Applications

Applications make collaboration more accessible by extracting the key information applicable to special topic areas and packaging it in smaller bites. The foundation of Transportation for Communities is a Decision Guide constructed of many individual key decisions that together represent a best practice approach to collaborative decision making. Each key decision provides information on "how to" fully implement collaboration. This vast amount of data can be overwhelming if considered in its entirety. Applications show how to apply collaboration to a subset of decision points in order to meet a specific challenge. Click on any of the Applications below to learn more.

An identified transportation need moves through four stages of decision making before it becomes a viable project for construction. Each of these stages contains their own unique challenges to a successful product. Collaboration can be a powerful tool to help overcome these challenges.

Long Range Transportation Planning

MPO planners have many responsibilities that continually challenge the available resources. Collaboration can help planning efforts stay on track while supporting policy decisions that offer the best solution for the region.

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Corridor Planning Studies

Because corridor planning is not a legally required process, it offers a great deal of flexibility with a more focused examination of problems and potential solutions. This helps move identified needs from the regional vision to a more solid concept for improvement. Collaboration in corridor planning studies can also offer a best practice set-up for the environmental review process.

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Integrated Programming and Fiscal Constraint

Both programming and fiscal constraint are aspects of MPO planning that address financial implications, but they are often considered independently. Integration ensures that the Long Range Plan and the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) are consistent and connected.

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Environmental Review Merged With Permitting

Environmental streamlining has been a topic of interest in transportation for several years. A merged NEPA and Section 404 permitting process takes advantage of the similar steps in both to create greater efficiency during environmental review. Collaboration within a merged process is a strong facilitator to avoid pitfalls and re-do loops.

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Stakeholder Collaboration

Community considerations that are not adequately addressed may present barriers to adoption of both plans and projects. Transportation for Communities provides support for full engagement of stakeholders in transportation decision making.

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Integrated Planning

Many planning processes exist outside of transportation decision making that affect transportation. Land use and air quality conformity along with environmental, economic, safety and security planning are examples. Transportation for Communities considers and supports the interface between these processes and transportation.

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Linking MPO Planning and NEPA

Decisions made during long range planning are often revisited during the selection of alternatives under NEPA; resulting in delay and public confusion. This Application identifies the information that can appropriately transfer between planning and environmental review at specific key decisions and how it is used.

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Streamlining a Bottleneck Project

There is increasing interest in streamlining decision making in order to move more quickly toward implementation of urgently needed transportation projects. This Application focuses on collaboration as a means to streamline bottleneck and corridor projects.

  • Bottleneck Project
  • Corridor Project

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