CDTC’s Community and Transportation Linkage Planning Program (the Linkage Program) provides consultant or CDTC staff technical assistance for joint regional-local planning initiatives that link transportation and land use. It is a key implementation activity of New Visions 2030, the regional long range transportation plan, which is predicated on reducing the growth of vehicular travel in the Capital Region. The Linkage Program is also the cornerstone of CDTC’s local planning assistance and public outreach efforts. CDTC’s transportation and land use policy is that good site and community design are essential to achieving regional transportation system goals. The Linkage Program is one of the most significant cooperative regional efforts in the nation to reflect, in practice, what representatives of the region’s counties, cities, towns and villages as well as state and local transportation providers have adopted as policy.
CDTC has funded a total of 61 collaborative, jointly-funded studies over the past nine years. Study sponsors have included 37 separate urban, suburban and rural municipalities and counties as well as not-for-profits and other public entities. Roughly $4.0 million in federal, state and local funds have been committed to the Linkage Program since its inception in 2000.
CDTC is currently undertaking its 2010-2011 solicitation for new Linkage Program studies. The deadline for submissions is November 20, 2009. New for 2010-2011 is the expansion of eligible efforts to include implementation activities related to Linkage planning studies or other similar planning work. Examples of implementation activities include strategic zoning code changes, zoning code overlays, the development or revision of design standards, operational modeling, assistance with SEQRA documentation toward the adoption of Linkage Program plans, etc. The assistance must be tied directly to the original scope and recommendations of the relevant planning study.