CDTC’s Community and Transportation Linkage Planning Program (the Linkage Program) is an integrated land use and transportation planning program created to implement the regional transportation plan
New Visions 2035.
The program has been recognized as a national best practice in
livability planning
and is the cornerstone of CDTC’s public outreach efforts. The program provides consultant or CDTC staff technical assistance for joint regional-local planning initiatives that link transportation and land use.
For 2013, the program will be focused on implementation activities related to completed Linkage Program plans or other completed local planning work (i.e. Comprehensive Plans, Waterfront Redevelopment Plans, etc.). Examples of implementation actions include strategic zoning code changes/zoning code overlays, the development or revision of site design standards or guidelines, official mapping and operational modeling.
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. In recognition of this regional achievement, the Linkage Program received a
2010 National Planning Excellence Award
from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration and the American Planning Association.
As of March 2013, CDTC has funded a total of 76 collaborative, jointly-funded studies over the past eleven years. Study sponsors have included 40 separate urban, suburban and rural municipalities and counties as well as not-for-profits and other public entities. Roughly $5.0 million in federal, state and local funds have been committed to the Linkage Program since its inception in 2000.