Draft Memorandum for the Record
Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization Meeting
September 18, 2014 Meeting
9:00 AM – 9:50 AM, State Transportation Building, Conference Rooms 2&3, 10 Park Plaza, Boston
Chairperson Lourenço Dantas, Massachusetts Port Authority
No decisions were made at this meeting.
Everyone who was present at the CMP Committee meeting introduced themselves (see below for attendance list).
The meeting minutes of the August 21, 2014, meeting were approved.
The federal fiscal year (FFY) ends September 30 and the next FFY will begin October 1. A work plan will need to be written for the next fiscal year to determine what CMP tasks will be pursued. The budget for FFY 2015 is $92,000, which is significantly lower than the previous fiscal year’s budget. Because of the budgetary limitations, we will need to select the tasks that should be appear in this (FFY 2015) work plan and the tasks that should be postponed until a later fiscal year.
Comments about Task 2:
The CMP currently monitors only in the AM and PM peak periods. INRIX collects data during all time periods. Therefore, the congestion scans indicate what time of day a roadway is congested. Congestion scans may reveal more for arterials than for express-highways because many planners are already aware of the problem locations on express-highways.
There may be arterials that have less than 45,000 AADT that may be suitable for congestion scans; therefore, a better threshold for conducting a scan might be 35,000 AADT. The thresholds for arterials to appear on congestion scan may be flexible, but as the number of arterials to be analyzed increases, so does the cost.
Comment about Task 3:
For Task 3, we will need to develop our own methodology for determining the cost of congestion that will customized for the Boston region. Other sources such as the Texas Transportation Institute may be used, but these sources must be taken cautiously before using these sources, as they might not be suitable for the Boston region.
Comments about Task 5:
Question: Is Task 5 already included in the Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP)? If not, is there a plan to incorporate this task into the LRTP?
Answer: Task 5 focuses more on local strategies and what the impact of congestion would be on implementing low-cost strategies than on large-scale strategies. The LRTP focuses more on strategies that are on a regional level. However, Task 5 will be a good follow up study to the LRTP needs assessment in a future fiscal year.
Comment about Task 7 (Conduct a price sensitivity analysis of MBTA park-and-ride-lots):
The MPO should meet with the MBTA and find out what the MBTA’s interest level is before Task 7 is pursued.
Question: Will the budget be sufficient for conducting all of these proposed tasks?
Answer: No, however we can select the most important tasks for this federal fiscal year and postpone the other tasks to a future fiscal year. Also, the studies that will be performed in the upcoming fiscal year can be used as a building block for future studies.
Question: Is there any budget for public relations and outreach for the MPO’s Web application?
Answer: Within the CMP, there is no budget for performing outreach with the Web application. However, one outreach-related idea is giving the website its own domain name, different form the domain name of the MPO website. Other ideas include purchasing advertisements around the entire Boston region. It is recommended that advertisements for all MPO staff CTPS functions be discussed in the subsequent MPO meeting.
Conclusions
Before this meeting, MPO staff thought that Tasks 1 through 4 would be suitable for the next federal fiscal year. At the end of the meeting, the committee agreed that Tasks 1 through 3 would be pursued in the current federal fiscal year, with the money saved by not implementing Task 4 allocated to the selected tasks.
Next steps:
There was none.
Members |
Representatives and Alternates |
---|---|
Massachusetts Port Authority |
Lourenço Dantas |
At-Large City (City of Everett) |
James Errickson |
City of Boston (Boston Redevelopment Authority) |
Tom Kadzis |
Three Rivers Interlocal Council (Town of Norwood) |
Steve Olanoff |
Regional Transportation Advisory Council (RTAC) |
David Montgomery |
Other Attendees |
Affiliation |
---|---|
Julia Prange Wallerce |
MassCommute |
MPO Staff/Central Transportation Planning Staff |
---|
Mark Abbott |
Ryan Hicks |
Scott Peterson |