Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of February 18, 2015
Draft Memorandum for the Record
Project Selection Advisory Council Public Hearing and Meeting
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Boston Common Conference Room, 10 Park Plaza, Boston
Secretary Stephanie Pollack, Chair, Secretary of Transportation, Massachusetts Department of
Transportation (MassDOT)
Welcome and Introductions
Secretary Stephanie Pollack, welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked everyone for their hard work on the project over the last year. She reiterated the importance of this council and how this is an opportunity to help reorganize capital spending.
Secretary Stephanie Pollack’s opening remarks stated that the project selection framework would not only just be applied to bond-cap project but also MPO projects. The Commonwealth’s 20% match for
MPO funds argues that this selection process should look to interact with MPO selection processes. She said this would be aided by the Secretary chairing MPO Meetings throughout the year starting in April.
The Secretary was aware of concerns around regional equity, and the potential need for different frameworks to evaluate projects within. To conclude, the Secretary asked for comments from the council members on her opening remarks.
Council Discussion
Jeff Mullan, Foley Hoag, thanked all the staff for their work and made three points regarding the opening remarks:
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He would like a policy statement from MassDOT outlining their vision for this report.
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The Council needs to understand the data gap and the need to look at which data is important versus not important.
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There is a need to use the selection process to investigate how we deliver and procure projects.
Doing so might help to create more bid rooms and therefore ‘more work out the door’.
John Pourbaix, CIM, said he was happy to see the new draft of the interim report. He made the following points:
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He is concerned about the available funds for the buckets in terms of what’s available, where it has to go and what’s discretionary. He said it is still not clear as to how it works. Mr. Pourbaix stressed the importance of a joint meeting with the Asset Management Advisory Council
(AMAC) to talk about the similarities and differences between what both groups are aiming to achieve.
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It is necessary to get the Secretary’s opinion on what the goal or objective of the new administration is.
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Once the buckets have been identified the criteria which have already been selected will take care of the selection process.
Secretary Pollack then provided some reaction on those comments, stating that the AMAC would focus on the state of good repair work and then this group would look at how to allocate bond-cap and other funds, and then the two groups would come together. Furthermore, the Secretary stated that AMAC is

Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of February 18, 2015 on a much longer time scale than the PSA Council and would be at different points come June 30 th
.
Scott Hamwey noted that there is a proposed joint meeting for April.
Steve Silveira continued the discussion with the following remarks:
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He is still unclear about the mission.
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In reference to a point made by Mr. Mullan, there needs to be a clear line between getting the projects done and picking projects.
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There is still a lot of work to do to streamline the process, to improve usability to those who do not know about the selection process.
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He is concerned about the end product of the report, highlighting the short time frame and current interim report. When questioned by Secretary Pollack about the design of the final report, Mr. Silveira suggested an overlay of the report in which mayors, selectman and citizens can understand how projects are selected helping to make the selection process transparent.
Secretary Pollack then stated three questions for the council to address regarding the flow of the selection process.
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Are all projects to be evaluated against each other or should the Council create multiple buckets? What are the potential categories of buckets?
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Where does regional equity come in the process and how are regions defined?
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Do the categories of metrics capture all the attributes of the projects we want to capture?
At this point the Secretary left to attend another meeting, and David Mohler directed the Council members to discuss the three questions stated by Secretary Pollack.
First Question
Before proceeding, Steve Silveira wanted more information about AMAC. John Pourbaix replied that
AMAC has only met a few times and has had similar presentations to this council, but has been more highway specific. Mr. Pourbaix stated the mission of the group was to essentially gain an inventory of existing infrastructure and assets. David Mohler provided further clarification stating this group also came from the Senate President who was focused on the idea of life cycle costing. Developing this inventory would help in future costing and preventative and maintenance projects, and improve knowledge on what can be considered an asset.
Jeff Mullan stated the Highway Division has a hard time with prioritizing maintenance projects versus capital projects. He suggested excluding maintenance projects from this process and defer to AMAC. Mr.
Mohler stated that purely maintenance types of projects were not capital and therefore would not be subject to this process.
John Pourbaix suggested creating buckets for highway, transit and discretionary. He said regional and modal equity could then be considered before applying the metrics. Steve Silveira proposed each project would get assigned to a bucket (e.g. safety) and then regional equity would be assessed after projects had been evaluated. Mr. Mullan agreed with this notion but stressed the importance that it is not just bond cap but toll revenue as well. He also emphasized the importance of defining maintenance and capital projects. Mr. Mohler then stated he viewed the buckets as being by mode (e.g. highway), which would then allow the Secretary to say we have ‘X’ amount to spend on highway projects and the top highway projects from the selection can compared and selected accordingly. Mr. Mohler said this

Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of February 18, 2015 approach can be transparent as long as the Secretary makes it clear how much funding is available for each mode.
James Lovejoy stated he was unclear about the distinction between maintenance and capital projects, given that the majority of projects will be system preservation. David Mohler suggested the majority of capital money is now not spent on purely maintenance projects as this comes from another source.
Steve Silveira requested a list of work that would be classed as maintenance in order to understand what would go in this bucket. Mr. Mohler stated it would now be the case that projects in the same buckets would be scored against one another instead of against one another in a single bucket.
At this point Clinton Bench stated there were two fundamental approaches to the selection process.
One is whether when comparing projects across buckets there is a comparative factor or if there isn’t. At this point Jeff Mullan suggested a two-tiered approach to avoid projects getting ‘crushed’ too early in the process. Mr. Bench challenged the Council suggesting that the process needs to be transparent as to why a project gets dropped or not. David Mohler then stated this would be up to the Secretary to make these decisions based on what funds were available for particular project buckets. Mr. Bench then stated there would have to be an assumption that mayors would be okay with reduced transparency due decisions made up front to allocate funding to particular buckets. Mr. Mohler stressed that as long as the Secretary is clear about how much money is available for bridges (for example), this can provide transparency as long as the process for prioritizing bridges is clear.
John Pourbaix requested information on the availability of funds per category, to help visualize where the money has gone previously. James Lovejoy then raised the issue that the Berkshires send $27 million in sales tax revenue to the T a year, but maybe receives $6 million back for highways. David
Mohler highlighted the Secretary’s point about where the regional equity screen needs to come in the process to address this point. Mr. Mohler stressed the Secretary’s point that this selection process will not just select the right projects, but kill the wrong ones.
Steve Silveira stressed the importance of looking at the potential economics of proposed projects, to see the return on investment to the respective regions. He also stressed this is an iterative process, as this is not going to result in money being given to all regions evenly as there maybe particular needs in particular regions at certain times. Regional equity should be achieved over a longer horizon than a single year. David Mohler directed staff to develop different approaches to bucketing and to share those with the Council in advance of the next meeting.
Scott Hamwey noted that staff had attempted to address the need for program balance and funding availability through the four-tier evaluation framework presented at the November meeting and included in the Interim Report. In that framework, the “bucketing” process being discussed by the
Council would effectively occur at the end of the process rather than up front. David Mohler suggested not using a bucket called safety due to people gaming the system in the past, calling their projects
‘safety’ projects even if they were not. Jeff Mullan also suggested looking for previous ‘buckets’ which have been created already. David Mohler stated there are currently bridge and pavement buckets, with everything else in a separate bucket.
Scott Hamwey suggested the Council meet on a more regular basis, in order to meet the June deadline.
John Pourbaix requested materials be released in advance of the proposed meetings.
Second Question

Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of February 18, 2015
David Mohler asked the Council to turn their focus to Regional Equity. He stated that a formula was created by the RPAs to distribute funds across regions and it has never been changed. He said RPAs are not willing to change it, not because they believe it is perfect, but because they are concerned that they might fare worse under a revision. Steve Silveira stated he did not know the current split between RPAs.
Mr. Mohler said it is possible to look historically at how the money was spent how it was budgeted, but not why a certain region got a certain amount of money.
Mr. Pourbaix suggested for simplicity to use Districts rather than MPOs, and Mr. Mohler agreed. Mr.
Mohler also stated that using MPOs out west would be easier, however in east Massachusetts there are many MPOs which would make it a lot harder to split funding in a way that would appear equitable.
James Lovejoy then made the argument that not using MPOs would reduce the transparency and makes it harder to identify with local constituencies, as to why their projects were not getting funded. But, highlighted that if the process is transparent enough it would help local constituencies understand why a project got funding or not.
David Mohler asked the Council whether regional equity should come at the beginning or end of the process. Jeff Mullan suggested using the regional equity screen at the end of the selection process to avoid screening out good projects at the start of the process. This point was supported by all the full
Council and Scott Hamwey, who noted that big projects in the small regions will be way out of scale if the screen is applied at the start of the process. Mr. Mohler said having the screen at the end of the process is a very public way of saying to people this was a good project but we didn’t fund it. Steve
Silveira said it could also be pointed out that a project wasn’t funded due to another area needed the money now.
Trey Wadsworth, MassDOT’s Manager of MPO Activities, asked whether these selection criteria would be applied over 3 to 5 years, for example alongside the CIP. David Mohler said that they eventually would be applied over a 4 to 5 year document. He also stated that the Council needs to define how a program will be determined to be regionally equitable. Mr. Mohler suggested Chapter 90, due to it being accepted and people understanding the process. He noted that if the MBTA is included in regional equity it warps the decision, as it receives $2 to $4 Million a year that can’t be spent outside the T region due to it being federal funds. Jeff Mullan stated this will also be the case for many of the funding options. Scott Hamwey then asked if we need something more defined than the current regional equity analysis done in the Interim Report.
The Council did not have time to address the third issue raised by the Secretary.
The Council proceeded to book the next meeting for March 3 rd
at 3:00pm – 5:00pm. Scott Hamwey stated that resources would be available as soon as possible.