IV. IMPLEMENTATION PLANNING AND
PROGRAMMING
TASK 4.07
Transportation
CDTC staff continues to work with the Access Transit
staff and county agencies to assure success of the brokerage. CDTC and CDTA staff will continue in 2006-08
to seek additional brokerage opportunities in other service areas.
CDTC continues to assist CDTA in its development of
several related initiatives, including the successful regional program using
state funds (Community Solutions for Transportation) and the federal Jobs
Access / Reverse Commute program. These
efforts will continue and will need to address the reduced, formula-based
funding provided to CDTA in SAFETEA-LU. Coordinated
effort with CDTA is required to address SAFETEA-LU’s planning requirement for developing
a comprehensive regional human service transportation plan that covers the
disparate objectives of Section 5310 (vehicles for private non-profit
agencies), JARC and the “New Freedom Initiative”. This will involve expansion of the current
JARC regional committee to include representatives from additional stakeholder
groups and the use of the expanded committee to guide staff work in developing
the plan. At present, CDTC anticipates
modeling the New Freedom Program after CDTC’s successful Spot Improvement
Program.
CDTC will also continue to participate in the
TASK 4.17 Arterial
Management Planning
Formal arterial management efforts were modest during 2005-06,
although arterial management policies, plans and standards are a routine aspect
of Linkage studies. In 2005-06, the Rt
67 study, the Rt 7 Colonie study, the Rt 4 East Greenbush study, the Colonie
Village Architectural and Design Standards Study and others prepared effective
arterial management plans. Staff expects
to revisit various CDTC arterial management guidelines in 2006-08, to consider
the need for 'standards' for arterial capacity and levels-of-service. Additionally, work will begin on an urban
arterial version of the "level of compatibility" indices developed in
1995 for suburban settings.
NYSDOT and CDTC, along with CDTA, the
NYSTA and other major players, completed the development of a "regional
architecture" for the Capital District ITS deployment in 2003-04. The architecture was formally adopted by CDTC
in December 2004. Cooperative efforts
will maintain the infrastructure in 2006-08.
TASK 4.62 Transit Operations Planning
CDTA will continue to conduct planning
effort under this task.
TASK 4.67 Bikeway / Pedestrian Facility Planning
The Bike and Pedestrian Transportation
Task Force remained active during 2005-06.
Activities and products included provision of technical support to the
Saratoga Heritage Trail program and involvement in CDTC's Spot Improvement
Program, Linkage planning and Greenway and TIP issues. A major effort was an update to the “Tool
Box” adopted as part of the New Visions plan.
Candidates for addition to the priority network were developed. The group also assisted CDTC in the
development of a revised version of the Regional Trails Map, originally published
in Spring 2002.
Under this task heading, CDTC staff
will continue to offer community assistance related to bike and pedestrian
planning issues, including the broader category of "traffic calming"
options and consideration of the “complete streets” concept. Additionally, CDTC will continue its
cooperative work with county traffic safety committees and the Governor's
Traffic Safety Committee to coordinate attention on bike and pedestrian safety
issues.
For 2006-08, it is anticipated that
the task force will assist in fleshing out a candidate “big idea / big ticket”
bike/ped regional greenway initiative for use in the New Visions 2030 public
dialogue.
CDTC continues to see success with its
Spot Improvement Program. The first
three rounds have funded 30 capital projects that would normally be too small
in scale for TIP funding. CDTC will
solicit a fourth round of funding in the spring of 2006.
TASK 4.19 Trail and
Property Owners Survey (new task)
A major survey effort of users and property owners will
be an effort in 2006, as well. The
survey will cover the Mohawk-Hudson trail, Zim Smith Trail, Uncle Sam Trail and
the area of the planned Helderberg Rail Trail as a repeat and expansion of the
earlier survey. An effort to capture
trip purpose for users will be made for use in future market assessment.
TASK 4.72 TIP Project
Planning and Development Work (TIP funded)
NYSDOT continues project planning and
development work for a number of projects on the CDTC TIP. This work will define the range of feasible
alternatives to be considered in preliminary engineering, based on traffic
operations, cost, and ROW impacts. Work
will continue in 2006-08.
TASK
4.97 TIP Development,
Monitoring and Update
During 2005-06, the 2005-10 TIP was adopted and maintained
through numerous amendments and publication of a "real time" TIP on
CDTC's web site. During 2006-08, it is
anticipated that the fourth round of Spot Improvement Program projects will be
solicited and programmed; Enhancement Program projects will be solicited and
prioritized for NYSDOT selection; and a 2007-12 TIP will be developed and
adopted in May 2007.
Prior to initiating the 2007-12 TIP update,