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.
The New Visions 2030 effort extends the
planning horizon to 2030 and seeks to address larger issues concerning regional
development patterns and quality of life; resource constraints and “big ticket”
ideas; and local planning capacity. 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 led to circulation of the document “Pursuing Quality in the
Capital Region” in the fall of 2002.
Throughout 2003,
the Quality Region Task Force met to refine the CDTC/CDRPC agenda within the
context of many regional development forums – those at the Center for Economic
Growth (CEG), A Regional Initiative to Support Empowerment (ARISE), the
Business – Higher Education Roundtable and other locations. A broad consensus emerged around seven
principles:
1. All
regional initiatives reflect a belief that there is a need for some degree of
economic growth in the region in order to sustain and enhance the region's
quality of life.
2. All
assert that, along with nurturing heritage tourism and retaining current
industry, growth in the high tech sector offers opportunities to the region for
developing a local economy with a range of career-type jobs.
3. All
the initiatives seek to revitalize the region's older urban areas through
economic development.
4. All
the initiatives recognize that much of the growth will occur in suburban areas,
and seek to have that growth help construct communities that are stronger and
better than what was there before, while retaining the character of the
community that brought the residents there.
5. All
the initiatives seek to have growth benefit all the region's residents through
adequate access to jobs, education and training.
6. Regarding
transportation, all have expressed a desire to find ways to prevent serious
loss of the highway mobility that is part of the region's quality of life. All have articulated a desire to use public
transportation, walkable communities and alternate modes to the maximum degree
feasible to assure access and travel options.
7. The
best way to address these issues regionally is to assign responsibilities for
different facets to different agencies and initiatives.
By January 2004,
CDTC determined that the CDTC/CDRPC work would be best facilitated by using
small “working groups” and other existing task forces to help the staff analyze
in parallel the subjects identified by the Quality Region Task Force and guide
the documentation of the analysis.
Working groups include staff, some Quality Region Task Force members and a few others
selected based on their knowledge and interest in the subject.
The technical
reports guided by working group and task force review will attempt to
articulate issues and begin to identify on one hand those potential policy
responses that are likely to receive consensus support once they are
circulated, and on the other hand those policy issues that require broad
discussion and debate.
The specific
efforts of each task force and Quality Region working group are described
below.
Finance Task Force: The
charge is to review and update both the cost for implementing the current (New
Visions 2021) plan and the resource expectation. Their product will guide both discussions of
other task forces and working groups and also inform CDTC’s overall policy
discussions regarding budget and resources.
Bike and Pedestrian Transportation
Task Force: The charge is to complete the task force’s
current effort to update the “Tool Box” and priority bike and pedestrian
network adopted as part of the existing New Visions plan. The product will also suggest new
principles/actions and put policy questions on the table for broad dialogue.
Goods Movement Task Force: The charge is
to provide suggested updates to the New Visions plan regarding treatment of
goods movement issues, the global economy and trade corridor issues, and any
appropriate revisions to the adopted goods movement network.
Quality Region Task Force: This task force will help coordinate the
material prepared by or for the other task forces, receive reports from several
working groups and help guide its dissemination for public discussion. The task force will specifically guide the policy
analysis of several travel demand and technology technical reports prepared in
2003-04 for the former Travel Task Force, which has been folded into the
Quality Region Task Force.
Working Group A : The charge is
to guide the preparation of a technical report,
“Effects of Alternative Growth and Development Scenarios”. The technical work will involve building from
CDRPC’s 2040 projections, showing alternative higher and lower growth levels
and differing development patterns and articulating both quantitative and
qualitative issues. This will primarily
be a “what if” exercise. Some modeling
of user costs, social /environmental costs, etc. will be involved. CEG’s intended development modeling effort
should be coordinated with Working Group A’s effort.
Working Group B: The charge is
to guide the preparation of a technical report, “Expressway System Issues and
Options”. The analytical work will
confront the fact that the expressway system has reached or will shortly reach
the end of both its intended physical and its functional life; identify issues
and options surrounding maintaining and rebuilding the expressway system and
consider alternative policy treatment of the subject of functional obsolescence
in an era of multiple constraints.
Additionally, Working Group B will
guide the preparation of another technical report, “Concepts for Operational
Efficiencies”. This work will
incorporate current ITS system planning and the explore
the maximum potential of operational and traveler information initiatives to
address future system issues.
Working Group C: The charge is
to guide the preparation of a technical report, “Costs and Benefits of
Potential Major Investments”. The
subject includes enumeration of plausible high-scale candidate investment for
the Capital District, drawing from initiatives viewed as successful in other
regions of the nation. These range from
rebuilding I-787 as a riverfront arterial to urban rail systems (ala
Raleigh-Durham).
Additionally, the group will guide the
preparation of another technical report, “Transportation System Design and
Regional Settlement Patterns”. The work
will involve a review of land use – transportation interrelationships with a
particular emphasis on the likely influence of transportation policy on broad
patterns of suburban development, urban revitalization, open
space protection.
Working Group D: The charge is
to guide the preparation of a technical report, “Larger-than-Regional Policy
Concepts”. The document will enumerate
and amplify upon the many policy issues have emerged at CDTC and other forums
that require state or federal intervention.
Many but not all of these issues relate to “leveling the playing field”
by addressing unequal treatment of older urban areas and new suburban areas.
Working Group E: The charge is
to guide the preparation of a technical report, “Concepts for Assisting Local
Decision Making in a Regional Context”.
The effort will articulate approaches to both improving the capacity of
municipal planning and approval processes and improving the external support
structure provided to local planners.
Additionally, CDTC
will review all other aspects of the existing New Visions plan to suggest
updates, revisions or extensions for subjects that are not the specific focus
of a task force or working group. These
aspects include special needs transportation, safety and arterial management. Also, CDTC will coordinate examination with
NYSDOT of the New Visions 2030 elements on the attainment of goals of the New
York State Energy Plan.
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
The schedule for the New Visions 2030 effort is challenging. Completion of all work and public dialogue
leading to preparation of a new plan is not expected to be completed until late
in 2005. For air quality conformity
purposes, CDTC may need to adopt an interim plan prior to, or in conjunction
with, the approval of the 2005-10 TIP.
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; 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 2004-05 will include air quality conformity
determination for the 2005-10 TIP and New Visions 2030 plan.
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 2003-04, 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 2004-05, including a particular focus on contribution
to the New Visions 2030 effort (see Task 3.77).
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
Products in 2003-04 have included goals and objectives, existing
conditions review, a list of corridor concept candidates and a recommendation
for examination of seven concept packages.
A phase 2 exploration of the concept packages is expected in
2004-05. Products of the effort will be
brought back to CDTC for consideration in the New Visions and/or TIP processes.
TASK 3.11 REVEST
During 2003-04, the REVEST working group met quarterly
through the fall of 2003. At that time,
the group was folded into the transportation committee of the
TASK 3.12 Transit Service Design Guidelines/ Transit Development
Plan (carryover, expanded scope)
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 effort will be more substantial
than anticipated when programmed in the 2003-04 UPWP. CDTA staff effort will be approximately
$100,000; a marketing and research effort will total $100,000; customer
research $50,000; and consultant professional
assistance, $250,000. The total $500,000
budget for this effort is shown under CDTA’s aggregate budget item for Task
4.62, with the exception of a $50,000 component which is data collection administered
by CDTC under Task 2.25.
CDTA adoption of the resulting plan is
anticipated, as well as CDTC adoption as appropriate. Products will feed both TIP and New Visions
processes. A 12 to 18 month schedule is
anticipated.
The majority of the work on this task
has shifted to 2004-05.
TASK
3.86 Continuous Aviation
System Planning Project (CASPP)
2003-04 activity by CDRPC included an economic impact
analyses for the