INTRODUCTION
What is the Capital District Transportation Committee?
The
Capital District Transportation Committee (CDTC) is the designated MPO for the Albany-Schenectady-Troy
metropolitan area. Every metropolitan
area in the United States with a population of over 50,000 must have a
designated "Metropolitan Planning Organization" (MPO) for
transportation in order to qualify for any Federal transportation funding. The simple purpose of each MPO is to provide
a forum for State and local officials to discuss transportation issues and
reach a consensus on transportation plans and specific programs of
transportation projects. The U.S.
Department of Transportation (USDOT) relies on each MPO to make sure that the
transportation projects that use Federal funds are the products of a
continuing, comprehensive, and cooperative planning process and meet the
priorities of the metropolitan area. To
put "teeth" into the MPO process, the USDOT will not approve
metropolitan transportation projects unless they are on the MPO's program. Federal law requires CDTC to maintain an
up-to-date plan to guide decisions regarding the nearly $100 Million in annual federal highway and transit funds
(including match) spent in the Capital District.
CDTC has its origins in the old Capital District Transportation Study
(CDTS), set up in 1965 through agreements between New York State and the four
Capital District counties (Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga, and Schenectady) and
the 78 municipalities in those counties.
The CDTC is composed of elected and appointed officials from
·
four counties;
·
eight cities;
·
the New York State
Department of Transportation (NYSDOT);
·
the Capital
District Transportation Authority (CDTA);
·
the Capital
District Regional Planning Commission (CDRPC);
·
the New York State
Thruway Authority (NYSTA);
·
the Albany Port
District Commission*;
·
the Albany County
Airport Authority; and
·
at-large members
representing the area's towns and villages.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Federal Transit
Administration (FTA) serve as advisory members. A full membership list appears in the inner front cover of this
document.
The CDTC sets its own broad agenda for planning
activities. With a small professional
staff funded with FHWA, FTA and county funds and the assistance of other member
agencies, it investigates issues critical to the future of the Capital
District. CDTC's planning approach can
be characterized by two words: Stewardship and Vision. Stewardship refers to the responsibility of
CDTC (collectively) to care for that which has been entrusted to us. CDTC has responsibility for existing
transportation facilities and services, public resources, personal resources
that are impacted by transportation decisions (like safety, comfort, and
convenience, in addition to dollars and cents), and natural resources. Vision refers to the responsibility of CDTC
to look to the long-range future of the area and make sure that the
transportation system works then as well as now. The goals of the Capital District's residents, businesses and
communities must be incorporated into our plans and programs. An awareness of problems to be averted and
the development of innovative ways to achieve the region's goals are important
to achieving and maintaining economic health and quality of life here.
What is the Regional
Transportation Plan?
The Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is a comprehensive long-range
(20-30 year) plan for the transportation system of the region, updated every
three-to-five years by CDTC. The RTP
includes goals, objectives, and policies.
The RTP also recommends specific transportation improvements. The New
Visions Plan adopted in March 1997 superseded the 1993 RTP. In air quality non-attainment areas, federal
law requires development of a new or revised plan within three years. CDTC's focuses its planning efforts
primarily on the surface transportation
system -- highways, transit, accommodations for bicyclists and pedestrians,
and intermodal connections to rail, air and water transportation. These are the areas over which CDTC's
federal responsibilities for coordinated planning and programming extend. Increasingly, surface transportation
planning overlaps and is interwoven with planning for ports, airports, rail
facilities and intermodal connections.
The outcome of this effort is also reflected in the plan.
What is New Visions 2021?
The
original New Visions process took
more than three years, concluding in March 1997. The process was built around public involvement. With a goal of developing a regional consensus
on transportation policy, New Visions
provided an opportunity to step back from the ten-year focus of the 1993 RTP
and look at longer-term issues and available financial resources. The result was a multi-modal plan that
reflected a consensus of CDTC members regarding the direction and focus that
will meet the region's mobility and other needs for transportation in the
Capital District through the year 2015.
The policies contained in the plan were backed up by realistic financial
strategies.
New
Visions gave a voice to
stakeholder groups not previously represented at the CDTC table. The articulation of widely diverging
positions helped identify common ground later.
This
visioning effort has left a legacy of openness and sensitivity to a wide range
of transportation objectives. It proved
its positive affect on regional transportation decisions already, in the
development of the 1997-2002 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and the
1999-04 TIP. In these two exercises,
over $100 M in federal funding was committed to new projects with an emphasis
on improving the mix of projects in the TIP.
The support
for the New Visions plan has led to
broad interest in creative implementation of the plan's elements. Over the past three years, implementers have
made remarkable progress across nearly all categories. In addition, many aspects of the public
involvement started in the New Visions process have continued. Both the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation
Task Force and the Goods Movement Task Force have continued meeting, and new
stakeholder/ public involvement working groups have been created around the
REVEST set of rail initiatives and the Champlain-Hudson International Trade
Corridor effort.
In 1999, CDTC initiated a
formal update of the New Visions plan.
Because of the strong support for the existing plan, and the healthy
progress being made in implementing it, CDTC members chose to pursue an update
rather than a full-scale re-invention of the plan. In 1999, the original New Visions plan was still a contemporary
product in the minds of CDTC participants and the memory of the plan's
extensive development was still fresh.
Most of the outside contributors to the New Visions plan were judged to
be more interested in implementation of the plan's recommendations than in
re-thinking the plan's philosophy.
In must be recalled that the
original New Visions effort included the use of three conferences, nine
on-going task forces, hundreds of thousands of dollars of staff and consultant
effort, over 60 public meetings and a one-year public comment period -- before
the plan was drafted. CDTC could not
repeat this level of effort within the next few years without compromising its
credibility.
Instead, CDTC undertook a more
focused effort to produce the New Visions 2021 plan. Its key aspects include:
·
Reflection on CDTC's TIP
actions and on other local transportation initiatives to assess the consistency
between New Visions principles and actual events.
·
Reliance on contributions from
stakeholders and the public in project implementation efforts to demonstrate
continued support for New Visions concepts.
·
Use of the results of two
regional public attitude surveys and a survey of residents and property owners
along NY 5 to demonstrate continued support for the New Visions concepts.
·
Use of two continuing task
forces -- Goods Movement and Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation -- to
contribute to the update.
·
Creation of two technical new
task forces to refine the information in the plan:
1)
A Finance Task Force to guide
staff effort related to project costs, resource assumptions and budget
adjustments.
2)
A Travel Task Force to help the
staff assess the accuracy of the New Visions plan's travel assumptions and extend
the horizon to 2021.
After the
2021 plan update effort is complete, CDTC will begin Phase 2 of the plan update
effort. Phase 2 will take approximately
15 months and will conclude with a second update of the New Visions plan. This
second update will extend the plan horizon to the year 2030.
What The New Visions 2021 Plan Does
Because of the
extensive consensus building effort in the original New Visions plan and the
continued support for its implementation, CDTC believes that the New Visions 2021 plan meets the needs of
the Capital District in a manner that reflects the best judgement of the
Capital District.
The New Visions 2021 plan:
·
reaffirms CDTC's
New Visions policies and
intentions for the region's transportation system.
·
updates strategies and a
reconciles the budgetary framework for CDTC's five-year Transportation Improvement
Program (TIP) which allocates funds to and determines schedules for specific
federal-aid projects.
·
serves as a new basis for legislative discussions regarding funding programs and elimination
of institutional and jurisdictional barriers.
The plan does not contain a list of all projects that
CDTC expects to undertake over the next 20 years. It is not a substitute either for the careful project-by-project
priority setting that takes place in creating the TIP or for the careful
examination of alternative solutions to site-specific problems that takes place
in the planning and design processes.
Consequently, the plan is not a series of lines on a map. Rather, it is a statement of principles,
strategies and budgetary emphasis to guide more detailed project decisions.
The
original New Visions plan did
represent a break from "business as usual." Measured in terms of policies and budget, it shifted from heavy
emphasis on routine pavement, bridge and bus renewal and congestion mitigation
to a carefully structured balance to achieve multiple objectives. Traditional infrastructure efforts are
carefully balanced with actions focussed on travel safety, economic development
and community enhancement, arterial management, bike and pedestrian
accommodation and transit redesign. The
plan called for transportation investment that keeps pace with travel growth
while simultaneously improving the transportation - land use linkage to keep
the rate of travel growth manageable.
The New
Visions 2021 plan maintains this balance and confirms the achievability of the
plan. It is primarily a refinement of
the previous New Visions plan, reflecting the achievements and addressing the
missed opportunities of the past three years while bringing strategies and
budgets up to date.