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.
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. CDRPC staff is providing
technical support and working group administration support in an integrated
manner with CDTC staff.
In August
2004, CDTC adopted a new regional plan via a New Visions 2025 Amendment. This action will provide the time necessary
to allow the new working group analysis and discussion to play out prior to
adoption of New Visions 2030.
The
technical reports guided by working group and task force review have attempted
to articulate issues and 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. Substantial documents have been prepared
regarding each of the issues assigned to the working groups.
The
discussion and debate will continue in 2005-06, with the conclusion being a
draft plan circulated for public review and adoption by CDTC. 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.
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
The schedule of this effort has
depended on the quality and timeliness of GIS-based crash history data; a
completion date is not known at this time.
For 2005-06, CDTC staff will use
In addition,
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
The Capital District remains an ozone
non-attainment area under the final, eight-hour standards. CDTC completed conformity determinations for
the New Visions 2025 and 2003-08
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 2004-05, quarterly task force
meetings continued under CDTC sponsorship.
These have been successful in engaging the freight community in a
continuing fashion on regional issues,
Regular
meetings will continue in 2005-06, continuing a particular focus on
contribution to the New Visions 2030 effort (see Task 3.77). Draft material for the New Visions 2030
document was prepared in 2004-05.
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
Final products are expected in late 2004-05 or early 2005-06 and will
be brought into the New Visions 2030 process.
This task also includes continuation of the REVEST working group
meetings as a subset of the trade corridor coalition transportation committee
meetings.
TASK 3.12 Transit Development Plan (carryover)
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.
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. Staff effort by CDTC is also involved as well
as support work by CDRPC.
CDTA adoption of the resulting plan is
anticipated, as well as CDTC adoption as appropriate. Products will feed both
TASK 3.86 Continuous
Aviation System Planning Project (CASPP)
This CDRPC-led effort will continue in
2005-06.