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. In recognition of this regional achievement, the Linkage Program received a 2010 National Planning Excellence Award for being a best practice in land use and transportation planning integration from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration and the American Planning Association.
CDTC has funded a total of 66 collaborative, jointly-funded studies over the past ten years. Study sponsors have included 39 separate urban, suburban and rural municipalities and counties as well as not-for-profits and other public entities. Roughly $4.2 million in federal, state and local funds have been committed to the Linkage Program since its inception in 2000.
CDTC is will be soliciting for new Linkage Program projects in the fall of 2010 for the 2011-2012 federal fiscal year. The expected focus of this solicitation will be on implementation activities such as 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.