III. PLAN
APPRAISAL
TASK 3.77 New Visions 2030 / New Visions for a Quality Region
The New Visions Plan largely revolves around regional consensus,
incremental changes, and fiscal constraint.
The strength of the plan is in the degree to which consensus on key
principles was found, and in the affordability of the recommended actions. It shifts the transportation investment
program's emphasis, but largely works within available resources.
Issues left unresolved in New Visions because of a lack of urgency,
lack of consensus or lack of resources will
come back to the table sooner or later.
It is CDTC's intention to revisit these issues regularly to work toward
consensus and identify resources before urgency becomes critical.
Unresolved issues from the existing (New Visions 2021) plan are to be
addressed in the following manner.
Listed below are the assignments of key remaining questions to various
components of the CDTC structure.
·
Referred primarily to the
Travel Futures Task Force: What will future demands be on the transportation system? How are demographics changing? What are the various travel market segments
(by household type, income, vehicle access and location) and what are the needs
and constraints on each? What are the
implications for transportation policy?
What will an aging population require, and how will our land patterns
and transportation system respond? How
will technological and economic changes affect all of this? How should CDTC and its members
institutionalize its understanding of uncertainty in travel forecasts?
·
Referred primarily to the
Finance Task Force: How are CDTC's forecasts of
financial need and resource availability holding up? Is the 2021 Plan still affordable, given
reduced state transportation budgets (compared to those anticipated in 2000)?
What financing options exist?
·
Referred primarily to the
Quality Region Task Force: How can the region address the
strong local interest in aesthetics (streetscaping, site design, underground
utilities and trail development)? What
can be done about the noise exposure identified in NYSDOT Region 1's recent
study? What about such notions as
converting I-787 to a boulevard,
·
To be addressed by special
studies, with results to be incorporated into work by each of the task forces: Has the urgency changed since 1997 regarding
addressing Northway congestion issues?
Do recent experiences with electronic tolling (HOT lanes) provide more
options for Northway treatment? How much
would the various highway or transit actions in the corridor cost? Is the Northway only the first of many
capacity issues on the Interstate system in the Capital District? Can any of these be fully addressed even if
funds were available?
Work on these fronts will
continue during 2003-04, toward adoption of a New Visions 2030 plan in 2003 or
2004. In February 2002, a new task force was launched to
oversee a visioning exercise for the 2030 plan.
The effort implements the New Visions' recommendation for an update to
the Capital District Regional Planning Commission's "Regional Development
Plan". Labeled the Quality Region
Initiative, work will pick up intensity in the 2003-04 program year and material will be developed for public review and
discussion by the end of the year.
The Travel Task Force will resume discussions and pick up the new issue
of policy treatment of possible growth-related travel increases. The New Visions for a Quality Region /
Visioning effort will continue, moving to a focus on transportation system
issues and local planning tools in 2003-04.
Involvement in ARISE, CEG and other regional efforts can be expected to
require significant time and attention over the coming year.
The Finance
Task Force will also reconvene in 2003-04 for critical aspects of the 2030
planning effort.
In conjunction, the NYS MPO Association is hopeful
that it will be able to initiate the planned shared cost study of the expected
impacts on travel of demographic and technology changes. A total of $100,000 is committed to this
cooperative effort, and FHWA's
TASK
3.01 Safety and Congestion
Management Systems
The approach for the safety
effort will be modeled after the development of the New Visions plan. A Safety Advisory Committee will be created
with representatives from each county, various federal, state, and regional
agencies (including CDTA, NYSDOH, NYSDOT, and NYSDMV), the region's business
community, neighborhood groups, and the police departments. The committee will oversee and guide the
safety management effort and will assist CDTC staff and the Planning Committee
on the development of the work program.
Members of the advisory committee will also participate in a small
number of task forces, which will focus on important issues identified by the
advisory committee for further study.
CDTC staff responsibility will primarily be in the areas of research,
data collection, and coordination of the task forces and advisory
committee. The task forces will develop
products that provide guidance on project development and other issues related
to safety. The schedule of this effort depends on the quality and timeliness of
GIS-based crash history data and full staffing at CDTC; a completion date is
not known at this time.
In the
context of the New Visions 2030 exercise, CDTC will revise its CMS principles
and its articulation of critical congestion corridors. CDTC and NYSDOT will work together to try to develop procedures for the
"tradeoff analysis" specified in CDTC's congestion management
principles. The tradeoff analysis is
required in considering capacity aspects of highway projects, particularly
infrastructure reconstruction projects.
CDTC also remains committed to examining the actual congestion relief
benefits achieved from CMS projects; much of this work, however, will need to
wait until such projects as
TASK 3.02 Air Quality
Planning
Work in 2003-04 will include completion of air quality
conformity determination for the 2003-08 TIP and New Visions 2030 plan. CDTC will also respond to any change in air
quality attainment status that results from EPA's adoption of revised
standards.
TASK 3.05 Infrastructure Planning
The New Visions 2030 outline triggers the need to review long-range state and local infrastructure financing. Staff activity will include examination of the components of recently experienced increases in unit costs for infrastructure work and estimation of the long-range fiscal impacts of these higher costs.
TASK 3.06 Goods Movement Planning
During 2002-03, quarterly task force
meetings continued under CDTC sponsorship.
These have been successful in engaging the freight community in a
continuing fashion on regional issues, TIP development and the New Visions
planning.
Regular meetings will continue in 2003-04, including a particular focus on contribution to the New Visions 2030 effort.
TASK 3.10 I-87 Study / Champlain-Hudson Trade Corridor Planning
Progress in this trade corridor work has led
to renaming the effort as the "
Congressional action in the FFY03 Transportation Appropriations Bill
earmarked $2,000,000 toward study of the I-87 corridor from
TASK 3.11 REVEST
The second edition of the REVEST document was published
in April 2001 and the REVEST working group continued to meet during
2002-03. Progress toward implementation
of the REVEST initiatives continues, with additional funding secured during the
year for the Rensselaer Amtrak,
During 2003-04, the REVEST working group will continue
to meet quarterly to monitor and help guide the pursuit of the various REVEST
elements.
TASK 3.12 Transit Service Design Guidelines/ Performance Monitoring
This effort will be conducted as a
collaborative CDTC-CDTA project using CDTC, CDTA and CDRPC staff resources as
well as reliance on consultants. CDTA
has assembled significant data is support of this effort. The effort will seek to provide guidelines
for appropriate transit treatment throughout the region, based upon development
densities, corridor orientation and available funding. The study will build upon work to date to
provide the basis for CDTA's operations plan in coming years. It will also provide guidance to CDTA
regarding the appropriate vehicle mix for its fleet, well in advance of the
next major scheduled
fleet replacement.
The majority of the work on this task
has shifted to 2003-04.
TASK
3.86 Continuous Aviation
System Planning Project (CASPP)
2002-03 activity by CDRPC included an economic impact
analyses for the