The Role of the Metropolitan Planning Organization MPO 808

mpo 808

As the official transportation planning agency of the area, it is the MPO's responsibility to ensure that the transportation problems of today and tomorrow are dealt with fairly and properly. This is achieved in large part through the use of a process known as 3-C planning: continuing, cooperative, and comprehensive. It is this process that makes the MPO a unique and valuable entity in the public sector.

The 3-C process is accomplished primarily through the MPO Policy Committee and the work of the MPO Staff. The MPO Staff consists of professional planners who conduct studies and research and report their findings to the Policy Committee. PC members are elected officials from city and county governments of the urbanized area encompassing the MPO's jurisdiction.

mpo808 are responsible to their constituents for the quality of the transportation system and its impact on overall quality of life. As a result, they have significant responsibilities in making difficult decisions in a timely manner. However, the responsibilities of the Policy Committee do not end with the making of decisions, but rather in seeing that the decisions are implemented effectively. To do this, the MPO Staff must work closely with other agencies in the region.

An essential component of the MPO's role is ensuring that citizens are informed about transportation issues and given opportunities to participate in the decision making processes of the MPO. This is a major goal of the MPO's Public Participation Plan.

The MPO collects and maintains comprehensive data that is used in the planning, programming, and forecasting of transportation services and facilities in the region. This data includes current and forecasted population, employment, travel time and delays, traffic counts, congestion and pollution levels, land use, and other information. This data is made available to all the transportation providers in the MPO area for a variety of purposes such as project evaluation and development, funding allocations, and the preparation of legislative proposals. The MPO also prepares a variety of reports that are available to the general public. These include annual publications such as the Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP), which looks twenty-five years into the future, and the biennial Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), which solicits projects' requests, cooperatively ranks them in order of merit, and selects those highest priority projects that can fit into an estimated available budget.