PLANNING
COMMITTEE MEETING
Meeting Minutes
May 23, 2007
Geoff Bornemann, City of Saratoga Springs (Vice-Chairman)
Judy Breselor, City of Troy
Frank Commisso, Albany Port Commission
Todd Fabozzi, representing Rocky Ferraro, Capital District
Regional Planning Commission
Steve Feeney, Schenectady County
Michael Franchini, Albany County (Chairman)
Steve Iachetta, Albany County Airport Authority
Barb McHugh, Town of Clifton Park
Phil Parella, representing Kristina Younger, CDTA
Marybeth Pettit, City of Rensselaer
John Poorman, Capital
District Transportation Committee (Secretary)
Dave
Rettig, NYSDOT Region 1
Joe Rich, Federal Highway Administration
Dede Rudolph, City of Albany
Phil
Serafino, New York State Thruway Authority
Bernard Sisson, City of Schenectady
John Stangle, representing
Denise Sheehan, Town of Colonie
Erin Thomas, City of Cohoes
STAFF AND OTHERS
Anne
Benware, Capital District
Transportation Committee
Frank Bonafide, NYSDOT Region
1
Peter Comenzo, Town of Rotterdam
Shelley Johnston, Creighton
Manning
George
Leveille, Town of Bethlehem
Sandra
Misiewicz, Capital District
Transportation Committee
Sree Nampoothiri, Capital
District Transportation Committee
Chris O’Neill, Capital
District Transportation Committee
Glenn Posca, Capital District
Transportation Committee
Jason
Purvis, Capital District
Transportation Committee
Paul Reuss, Village
of Menands
Jim Rivers, City of Troy
Deb
Stacey, Capital District
Transportation Committee
Steve Watts, Town of Halfmoon
Jim Welch, The Core Project
VISITORS ISSUES
Chairman Franchini opened the meeting at approximately 9:40 am. There were no
visitor’s issues.
Action Items
Approval
of the May 2, 2007 Meeting
Minutes
The May 2nd minutes had two errors with
regard to attendance—Peter Comenzo and Steve Watts should have been listed under members attending rather
than Staff and Others. The minutes of
the May 2nd will be modified to reflect this change. Dave Rettig requested that the sentence under the draft Updated
Bicycle and Pedestrian Game Plan and Toolbox section of the minutes that
referred to his comment regarding the regional greenway initiative be modified
to read “…greater attention” rather than “…greater support”. The minutes of the May 2nd meeting
were approved with these changes noted.
Approval
of the Year End Budget Revisions
CDTC staff annually takes steps to close out the fiscal
year (March 31st) subsequent to Planning Committee approval and
audit. The previously distributed
material provided details on this process.
The members approved the proposed year end budget revisions.
NEW VISIONS 2030 ELEMENTS
Draft Goods
Movement Plan
Jason Purvis reviewed the previously-distributed summary of the Draft
Goods Movement Plan. Jason
noted that this plan is a product of the Task Force which met quarterly up
until last year. The task force now
meets as a group once a year in a conference atmosphere (the first conference
was held last fall at RPI). The plan notes
that the Capital District is in a critical location for freight activities and
that there needs to be better integration of freight in the planning process.
Dave Rettig requested that the candidate action dealing with truck
stop electrification be modified to include private truck stops as well as
those owned by NTSTA and NYSDOT. The
members approved the plan with this modified candidate action.
Draft Working
Group B Report
Chris O’Neill reviewed the previously-distributed summary of the
draft Working Group B Report. Working
Group B was charged with investigating and documenting “Expressway System
Issues and Options”. Working Group B
identified costs related to keeping the area’s expressways and expressway
bridges in good condition. Maintenance
and ITS needs were estimated to cost in excess of $3.2 billion over the next 30
years. These costs were in line with the
findings of the Finance Task Force. The
Finance Task Force confirmed the magnitude of the Working Group B numbers. The Working Group B report has been updated
to state clearly that the Finance Task Force numbers will be used in the New
Visions 2030 Plan.
CDTC staff, as part of the Working Group B work, also
analyzed the MIST data to determine delay associated with congestion and
incidents and to help evaluate expressway operational needs and appropriate
strategies and solutions. Working Group
B identified implications of growth on expressways. In general, the Northway and I-90 are already
at capacity in the peak direction (AM and PM) which means that there will be
little or no traffic growth in peak hour because physically the expressways
can’t fit more. Consequently, traffic
growth will be forced onto parallel routes and peak periods will become longer. One of the conclusions of the analysis
performed for the Working Group B effort is that there is little that can be
done to eliminate daily recurring congestion in the peak periods. Working Group B also concluded that ITS,
incident management and operational improvements represent the most effective
strategies for expressway congestion management.
Dave Rettig requested that the conclusion stating that “there is no
capital improvement such as widening that can eliminate daily recurring
congestion in the peak periods” be amended to state that there is no feasible capital improvement… The committee approved the Working Group B
Report with this modification.
Draft
Working Group C Report
John Poorman reviewed the previously-distributed summary of the
draft Working Group C Report. This
report investigates how and why big initiatives in other metro areas came to be. Seventeen big initiatives were initially
reviewed with an additional in depth review of six, leading to the articulation
of six regional conditions that appear to be pre-requisites for implementation. The report indicates that while this region
is not yet in position to implement any of the bold initiatives outlined, we
are in a good position go forward with them if the economic and political
environment change. The committee
approved the Working Group C report.
Draft
Working Group D Report
John Poorman reviewed the previously-distributed summary of the
draft Working Group D Report. John indicated
that Todd Fabozzi from CDRPC was the primary author of the draft report. The Working Group D material explored issues
related to home rule in New York; the effects of the large number of
municipalities in the state; the uneven playing field confronted by cities
competing with suburban towns; sprawl without growth; the loss of farmland;
local government planning; the plight of “inelastic”, declining cities; and
smart growth policies in other states. The
report describes an extensive list of policy choices confronting the region. Recent activity such as the coordinated
effort with the Center for Economic Growth (CEG)
regarding alternative future scenarios indicates that the positions advanced by
CDTC in the original New Visions plan have gained considerably more supporters
over the years to permit steady, incremental change.
The report concluded that the larger-than-regional
subjects of governance, tax policy and annexation need further extensive
discussion before it is possible to determine whether there is a broad regional
consensus on the appropriate actions to take.
After some discussion, the members approved the report.
Draft
Working Group E Report
Sandy Misiewicz reviewed the previously-distributed summary of the
draft Working Group E Report. Sandy indicated that the technical report documents current
efforts and articulates approaches to improve the capacity of municipal
planning and approval processes. Todd Fabozzi noted that the Linkage program was modified as a direct
result of this working group’s efforts; the Linkage program now puts emphasis
on smart growth activities. The report
should note this change in emphasis. The
“shoulds” in the report also need to be replaced with “will”. Steve Watts suggested that word without
in the sentence “the capital region is planning without regional growth” be replaced with in absence of. The members
approved the draft report with the corrections noted.
Draft Finance
Plan
John Poorman reviewed the previously-distributed summary of the findings
of the Finance Task Force. Work
performed included full modeling of pavement and bridge conditions and
consideration of products such as CDTA’s Transit Development Plan, the state’s
High Speed Rail Task Force, the I-87 Corridor Study, and a decade of experience
working with New Visions budgets for planning and programming. The task force grappled with the key question
identified-- whether the recent rapid increase in unit costs has created a
permanent shortfall of funds to accomplish even the modest commitments in the
New Visions plan. The task force
concluded that it is reasonable to anticipate that over the long term, revenues
will track inflation and at least come close to tracking travel (vehicle miles
of travel or equivalent). The Task force
noted that funding for surface transportation is cyclical with funding
initiatives achieving public support when viewed by the public as urgent and
worthwhile. The Task force further noted
that it is not reasonable to anticipate that revenues will
continue to be out-of-whack with the basic-system-maintenance-with
occasional-improvements game plan represented by New Visions.
John provided a hand-out detailing the federal
requirement of a financially constrained transportation plan and CDTC’s
approach to verifying that the New Visions Plan is financially constrained. Joe Rich noted that CDTC’s
approach is unique, but reasonable. The
committee approved the Plan.
Remaining
Activities
John Poorman noted that the New Visions and SAFETEA-LU compliance
material will be packaged for Policy Board review and approval. John will modify the PowerPoint presentation that was shown
to the Planning Committee earlier in the month for the June Policy Board
meeting. The Policy Board will be asked
to release the New Visions 2030 Plan for public review. Public review will occur between June and
September. The Quality Region Task Force
will reconvene to look at the pieces of the plan with an eye toward
consistency. Using this timeline, the
plan should go before the Policy Board for final adoption in September.
2007-12 TRANSPORTATION
IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
Items
Raised by NYSDOT
It was determined that this agenda item needed to be
discussed before the first agenda item under the TIP heading, Issues to be
Resolved, could be discussed. Frank Bonafide initiated the discussion by reviewing the reasoning
behind the NYSDOT’s recommendations for project deferrals. Frank reassured the committee that with the proposed
deferrals, none of the projects were outside the five year TIP schedule. Committee members questioned the need for the
deferrals and voiced concern over what the deferrals would do to project
sponsor budgets and project sequencing.
Frank Bonafide distributed two handouts detailing NYSDOT’s
interpretation of TIP allocations and budgets and CDTC’s interpretation. Dave Rettig advised members to look at the over-programming aspect
of the tables and the options to balance the program. Mike Franchini asked the department to inform the Main Office that “11th
hour” changes in TIP allocations and spending levels is very disruptive to
locals and undermines the MPO process.
Geoff Bornemann raised the concern that CDTC’s and NYSDOT’s allocation
figures are very different and need to be reconciled before further discussion
on project deferrals occurs. Glenn Posca stated that CDTC is not over-programmed if programming
is looked at by row and column, and that constraint by cell (fund source by
year) is not required.
John Poorman recommended that as a first exercise, CDTC and NYSDOT
need to reconcile the allocation figures.
This reconciliation needs to occur with CDTC and NYSDOT staffs, not at
the Planning committee table. Once the numbers
are reconciled, the Planning Committee needs to meet again to discuss project
deferrals and other options that may be required for fiscal constraint. A June 5th (Tuesday) Planning
Committee was scheduled.
Steve Iachetta put a motion on the table to adopt a policy to accept
15 percent over-programming in annual TIP budgets. The motion was voted on but not carried.
Geoff Bornemann suggested that project sponsors submit information
about all of their projects (not just those that are targeted for deferral) to
CDTC staff and NYSDOT so that an informed discussion about deferrals can occur
at the next meeting. Elements required
should include information on schedule (readiness), relative priority within
the jurisdiction, corollary activities that the schedule might impact and
budget. It was determined that this
approach would be followed. CDTC staff
will contact project sponsors for this information.
TIP Issues
to be Resolved
This discussion of the 2007-12 TIP Update was tabled
until the June 5th Planning Committee meeting because of the
inconsistencies noted in the TIP allocations and the list of project deferrals
that was put on the table.
Updates to
projects in the Draft 2007-12 TIP
This discussion was also tabled until the June 5th
Planning Committee meeting.
DISCUSSION ITEMS
STATUS OF PLANNING ACTIVITES
Due to lack of time, the Status of Planning Activities
was not discussed.
OTHER
A June Planning Committee is scheduled for June 5th 2007 at 1:30 pm. The change in day (Tuesday) and time (1:30) should be noted.
The June 7th Policy
Board meeting will still be held,
even if TIP issues are not resolved.
There being no other business, the meeting was adjourned
at 12:15 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
John P. Poorman
Secretary