Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
Draft Memorandum for the Record Project Selection Advisory Council Public Hearing
September 24, 2014 Meeting
2:30 pm – 4:30 pm, Haverhill City Hall
Richard Davey, Chair, Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, Massachusetts Department of Transportation
(MassDOT)
1.
Introductions
Secretary Richard Davey began the meeting by thanking the members of the Project Selection Advisory (PSA)
Council for the work completed to date and noted that significant progress has been made over the past several
meetings. He further noted to the members of the public in attendance that comments are welcome on both the
materials being presented today, as well as other thoughts or suggestions that the public may have regarding how
our limited transportation funding resources are allocated across the Commonwealth.
Public Meeting
2.
Discussion
Scott Hamwey, MassDOT, provided an overview of the meeting agenda and encouraged attendees to provide
input immediately following the Council meeting, although public comments would be taken at the front-end of
the meeting for those who needed to leave early.
Elena Mihaly, staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) stated that she is presenting the comments
of Rafael Mares of CLF who could not attend. She commended the PSA Council for the great work and progress on
the project selection criteria thus far. Ms. Mihaly noted that they are particularly impressed with the draft scoring
matrix, which is thoughtful and does a good job of incorporating the input on metrics from the Council and the
public. CLF sees the matrix as simple and easy to apply, and believes it strikes a good balance with the relevant
state policies regarding reduction in greenhouse gases, Healthy Transportation, and GreenDOT. CLF would like to
see the Council move ahead with implementation of the process. Secretary Davey requested that CLF provide their
comments in the form of a written letter to further document their input.
Theresa Park, Planning Director, City of Lawrence agreed that each of the six objectives relates to the needs in the
City of Lawrence, and that the Council should continue to work through the metropolitan planning organizations
(MPO) on the specifics of how the scoring and weighting is structured. She further noted the objectives with
particular relevance to the City, such as Mobility/Access, which is important because of the high percentage of
environmental justice populations in the City who need access to jobs. The City is very supportive of the Merrimack
Valley Regional Transit Authority but recognizes that more needs to be done to provide improved mobility and
access to the population. For the objectives of Economic Development and Safety she further noted that the City
has a wide range of needs. A recent road safety audit in the City showed the study location having a crash rate
that is double the typical rate, indicating the need for improvements there. Ms. Park also noted there are many
vacant large former mill buildings in the City, and that the project selection criteria should address the needs of
Lawrence and other Gateway Cities in the Commonwealth.
Mr. Hamwey then returned to the regular meeting agenda. He explained that the Council was formed last year
through the Legislature under Chapter 46 of the Acts of 2013, and is charged with recommending uniform project
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Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
selection criteria as well as a project prioritization tool for the Secretary of Transportation to deliver to the
Massachusetts Legislature before the end of the year. He further noted that this is the fourth of the six required
public hearings, with one being held in each of the six MassDOT Highway Districts. He then introduced each of the
five Council members present in the public hearing. In addition to Secretary Davey he introduced David Mohler,
MassDOT Deputy Secretary for Policy; Jeffrey Mullan, former Transportation Secretary; Frank DePaola, MassDOT
Highway Administrator; Steve Silveira, ML Strategies; and John Pourbaix, Executive Director of the Construction
Industries of Massachusetts. He recapped the mission of the PSA Council and noted that the Council has reached
out to sister agencies, MPOs, and federal agencies for their input on project selection criteria. He mentioned that
Jim Lovejoy was not in attendance and is recovering from surgery. Also absent from the meeting was Linda
Dunlavy.
Mr. Hamwey then went through the six categories of objectives and criteria, and went on to say that the current
draft of the selection criteria is still largely subjective, and that MassDOT is working to make it more quantitative,
which in turn will make it more transparent.
Mr. Hamwey provided the audience with handouts containing the illustrative project list and the updated scoring
matrix. He went on to explain the project scoring and weighting system and why certain categories such as access
and mobility are given the highest weight. He pointed out that at the prior meeting Council members asked for
additional projects representing true rural conditions, and went on to describe each of the new illustrative projects
that were added to the analysis. Two of them are rural projects in the western portion of the state.
•
•
Tyringham Road project in the towns of Tyringham and Lee
Housatonic Street project in the town of Dalton
The other two projects added are in the Merrimack Valley.
•
•
Route 114 Improvement project
I-93 Bus-on-Shoulder project
He went on to summarize the feedback received at the Springfield meeting regarding the initial scoring results.
There were Boston projects at the top and bottom of the illustrative scoring, and there were bicycle projects also
at the top and bottom of the illustrative scoring, which was initially encouraging. However, the point was made at
the Springfield meeting by some Council members that mode shift may be weighted too heavily in the formula. For
example, in the case of the Causeway Street cycle track it was pointed out that the actual mode shift from
automobiles is unlikely to be significant. Shifts from walking or transit to bicycle should not be weighted the same
as shifting trips from automobiles to walking, bike, or transit. Based on the feedback from the Springfield hearing
MassDOT went back to re-score the illustrative projects using less weight for the mode shift criteria. Projects that
scored well for greenhouse gas reduction also scored well for mode shift. He stated that MassDOT went back and
changed the weighting system to reflect the input received. He showed the new updated scores for the expanded
list of projects, which identified whether the score went up or down since the initial score, and why. Some of the
projects that scored high in the initial analysis continue to score well, while some of the others do not. For
example, he mentioned that the Route 2 project in Erving, which is in a rural area of the state, continued to score
well. The Fenway bicycle project in Boston did not score as well with the revised scoring system as it had with the
original scoring system. He showed the new scores for the updated list and noted that Mr. Lovejoy recommended
using a 10 point scale rather than the 100 point scale because the 100 point scale implies a level of scoring
precision that is not possible to achieve. A 10 point scale is more appropriate to the quantitative aspect of the
scoring because it would allow for discussion of projects at the margins.
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Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
3.
Council Comments
Mr. Mohler asked if the benefits of the Bus-on-Shoulder project have been identified. He asked if we know how
many people would benefit from this project compared to others such as the Tyringham Road project, which
scored a 37 while the I-93 Bus-on-Shoulder project scored a 36. Mr. Hamwey stated that the primary reason is
that mode shift was de-emphasized in the current scoring system based on the input from the Council members at
the Springfield meeting. When mode-shift is more heavily weighted the I-93 Bus-on-Shoulder project scores
higher, but now that system preservation has been given additional weight it results in Tyringham Road scoring
higher.
Dennis DiZoglio, Executive Director of the Merrimack Valley MPO, stated that the Bus-on-Shoulder project will
benefit many users in the region according to analysis performed by the MPO and others. The project benefits
should be more fully articulated before any final scoring of that project.
Mr. DePaola stated that the project benefits will need to be examined in greater detail to distinguish those which
are qualitative versus quantitative. He asked how the I-93 Bus-on-Shoulder project scored on the environmental
criteria. Mr. Hamwey explained that the project scored high on environmental criteria and not as high on others
such as safety.
Mr. Mohler stated that he considers the BRT project in Springfield more realistic for achieving mode shift than a
typical bike trail project. He asked how relative benefits will be accounted for. Mr. Hamwey stated that project
cost and trip volume are not yet a factor in the project weighting process, but there is an efficiency metric that gets
at the question of benefits and costs. For example, on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston, the efficiency of dedicating
travel lanes to bus is much greater than it would be for a project dedicating lanes to buses where ridership
potential is much lower. Jennifer Slesinger, MassDOT, went on to add that the scoring accounts for degrees of low,
moderate, and high levels of impact, which can get to the question of users impacted to a certain extent.
Secretary Davey stated that the current draft is missing an investment analysis. Mr. Mullan agreed that this new
material is responsive to what was requested, but asked how cost gets factored in? The statute requires the
Council to consider project cost. Mr. Mullan affirmed his agreement with Mr. Lovejoy’s comment that a 10 point
scale is better than a 100 point scale. He believes that with the 100 point scale provides a false sense of precision.
He went on to suggest consideration of a two tier process for scoring. Tier 1 would be for basic screening and
scoring, and for those projects that pass the screening, a Tier 2 for investment analysis would support the next
level of project selection.
Mr. Mohler suggested that Tier 1 could be utilized to identify projects early in the process that are unlikely to be
advanced and could be used to inform the regions and local governments which projects are not meeting
minimum criteria and therefore unlikely to receive state funding.
Steve Silveira concurred and suggested using Tier 1 as a notification to locals that the project needs to recast or
find local/private funds. He stated that he is nervous about any process that ranks Causeway Street at the top of
the list. Mr. Silveira noted that he thinks the 10 point scale would be a problem because most projects would end
up at a six, for example, leaving the project selection process highly subjective.
Secretary Davey shares Mr. Silveira’s concern with the relatively high score of the Causeway Street project. He
stated that staff needs to look at the costs and benefits of each project and consider the life cycle costs. System
preservation is necessary and this will be a useful process in a few more years after the backlog of deferred
maintenance, repair, and replacement projects are addressed. He further noted that the tiered screening process
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Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
could be useful for giving locals early notification about the status of their projects. For those that do not pass the
initial screening it will alert the locals that they need to consider other sources of funding.
Mr. DePaola stated that he would be more comfortable with scoring that is grouped by program funding sources.
He suggested using a percentage for interstate maintenance and subsets for community projects and other
categories. Large, Interstate preservation projects will likely receive a large percentage of the funding under the
scoring system, so for equity, it may be necessary to slice the funding into categories with each receiving a
minimum amount of funding, then use scoring to rank the projects within each funding program.
Mr. Mohler made it clear that traffic on I-93 is terrible and the system must allow for addressing it. He stated that
he prefers scoring everything first, then looking at the geographic equity and adjust the funding levels and
projects, as needed.
Mr. Silveira suggested going further and using a three tier system. Tier 1 would be an initial statewide screen,
followed by Tier 2, which looks at mandated funding pots. Tier 3 would then consider geographic equity. He
recognizes that some level of subjectivity will be part of the process, particularly for geographic equity.
Secretary Davey said he likes the idea of a tiered approach. Much of the funding is already formula driven and so it
is the funding layers that have some discretion that we need to be focusing on.
John Pourbaix stated that the transportation system is currently suffering from a focus on mega projects and now
there is not enough money. He believes that the criteria will be helpful for breaking out where money must be
spent based on formulas and legislative mandates, and which have discretion. He wants to see a benefit-cost
analysis as part of the process that identifies the life-cycle cost implications of project choices.
Mr. Mullan also suggested a tiered approach to evaluating projects. He asked questions regarding how to load the
various “buckets” of funding—whether it should be based on population, VMT, or some other criteria.
Mr. Silveira noted that when looking at cost, there also needs to be consideration of the cost of doing nothing, i.e.
deferred maintenance and repairs. Secretary Davey noted that the Accelerated Bridge Program (ABP) is targeted
at addressing the issue of deferred maintenance and repairs on bridges.
Mr. Hamwey thanked the Council members for their input and thoughts and noted that these issues raised will be
addressed in the ongoing development of the project selection criteria.
4.
Regional Equity
Ms. Slesinger stated that in response to the request of Council members, MassDOT reviewed current
transportation program funding levels to determine if they are geographically equitable to inform how to
distribute funding going forward. She provided an overview of the regional equity analysis. She stated that in
developing the criteria, they mostly looked at STIP and CIP.
Secretary Davey stated that all regions have transportation needs that exceed available funding levels and
requested that the statement be added to the next report. He went on to add that no town or region is getting
more money than they need. There are worthy projects across the state and the report needs to reflect this. He
said they are not trying to correct inequities between cities and towns caused by a particular city or town currently
receiving more than is needed.
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Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
Ms. Slesinger presented a slide showing the current breakdown of Chapter 90 funding. She stated that the formula
is based 60% on lane miles, 20% population, and 20% employment. She also explained how the Chapter 90
breakdown compared with the breakdown of STIP and CIP funding. She pointed out that in general, the analysis
shows there is geographic equity, though there are some outliers in the draft analysis. For example, the Pioneer
Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) and Merrimac Valley MPOs rate at or near the top in each category while Old
Colony MPO generally ranks at or near the bottom of the MPO rankings across the funding categories and
measures. She presented slides summarizing the analysis of funding levels per capita and per lane mile and noted
that other than Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket there are no clear outliers, and those are explained in Martha’s
Vineyard by two bridge projects that tend to skew the results because of the relatively low population there.
Mr. Pourbaix asked if the patterns within the 4-5 year analysis period are similar to patterns if looking back over a
longer period, such as 10 years past.
Mr. Silveira asked if there is a statewide inventory of transportation infrastructure condition organized by MPO
where staff could look for a correlation between existing conditions assessments and funding levels. Mr. DePaola
stated that the condition data is available for the highway/bridge facilities for each highway district. He said that
looking back, there has not been much non-highway spending but going forward more funding is going to transit.
Mr. Silveira further suggested that this data be used to determine a percentage of money spent by MPO or District
compared to the identified need.
Mr. Mohler observed that the CIP analysis shows a large amount of funding going to the Boston MPO and this
reflects the major transit projects in the region and major investments such as the new Orange and Red Line cars.
He asked for clarification on what modes of transportation are included in the CIP analysis. Ms. Slesinger clarified
that the CIP includes transit and highway, as well as a small relative dollar value of aeronautics projects. The STIP
analysis for this presentation only includes highway.
5.
Urban and Suburban/Rural
Ms. Slesinger described the additional cuts at the funding data, this time looking at how the funding is currently
allocated in urban areas of the state compared to suburban/rural areas. The analysis used population density of
greater than 5,000 persons per square mile as the definition of urban. If a city or town contains one or more
census blocks with density that meets the urban definition, the entire city or town was counted as urban and all
the projects contained within it were counted as urban. A total of 119 municipalities in the state were categorized
as urban using this definition. Cities and towns without any areas meeting the urban density definition were
counted as suburban/rural. Ms. Slesinger noted that with more time, a more robust geospatial analysis can be
conducted that more accurately reflects the dollar value of urban versus rural projects.
Mr. Silveira asked about the suburban/rural category and suggested that suburban is very different from rural and
so should have its own category. Mr. Mohler agreed it might make sense to break the numbers out by urban,
suburban, and rural. Scott Hamwey further clarified that the reason the analysis focused on urban is because it is
within both the suburban and urban areas where so many of the selection objectives can be achieved, such as
those related to mode shift or sustainable development.
Mr. Mullan asked if there is a takeaway from the analysis that shows Pioneer Valley MPO doing so well and the Old
Colony MPO not doing so well. Mr. Mohler responded that some MPOs which are very small don’t compete well
for funding with the larger MPOs. For example, Northern Middlesex MPO and the Old Colony MPO only have 6-9
municipalities each.
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Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
Ms. Slesinger wrapped up the regional equity discussion by noting that the analysis thus far does not appear to
have identified any major inequities in the geographic distribution of funding.
6.
Public Comments
Mr. DiZoglio began by thanking the Council for bringing its meeting to the Merrimac Valley. He stated that many
of the MVMPO concerns are on the table and it was informative to hear the issues being discussed by the Council.
The MPO has used its own scoring system for the past 10 years and stated that the Council is on the right track
with the approach it is taking. Secretary Davey asked if it is fair to say that in this process we should not let perfect
be the enemy of the good. Mr. DiZoglio agreed and went on to say that the Safety objective should include
security and evacuation routes. The Preservation objective needs to address climate change because of its
potential impact and its relationship to the resiliency of the system. For the Health related objective, they would
like to understand whether and how public health distress areas will be defined and identified in this process. For
Economic Development, they would like to see this coordinated with other state agencies responsible for
economic development planning, and to consider references to the state priority development areas. For the
Social Equity objective, the benefits component of the project needs to be included. For Mobility and Access, the
MPO uses travel time savings, congestion relief, and connectivity. He suggested adding Cost Effectiveness into the
process.
Nick Downing, Metropolitan Area Planning Council, stated that they will provide written comments as well. He
thanked the Secretary and Council, and went on to state that the end of year deadline is important and asked
when the best point in the process would be to provide extensive written comments. Secretary Davey responded
that now is the best time because it makes it more likely to be worked into the Council’s report.
Geordie Vining, Town of Newburyport, praised the Council’s approach to date, and also echoed Mr. DiZoglio’s
concerns and suggestions. He noted that from his own experience in developing ranking systems, he knows it is a
difficult process. He agreed that no single scoring number can be reliable, and suggested that the Council be very
upfront on this issue by including a statement to this effect in the report. He also concurred that he favors the 10
point scale. The 100 point scale cannot yield realistic results and would be misleading. He mentioned that he will
be providing these comments in written form to the Council.
Mr. Silveira noted that the Council needs to decide whether to continue with the schedule or submit the report
when it is ready and sufficient analysis has been completed. If the other members believe the legislative schedule
is the driver, he will stop raising the question and focus on the report.
Mr. Pourbaix stated that in the past, the Transportation Finance Commission (TFC) had a similar concern and dealt
with it by issuing an interim report, then continued to work with the new administration.
Secretary Davey expressed that he shares some of these concerns and sees the value of having the new
administration taking office in early 2015 having ownership of the report, and not just having it sit on the shelf. He
stated that he is particularly interested in the Cost-Benefit process being defined in the report, whether it is
interim or final.
Mr. Mullan stated that the TFC report was very helpful to him when coming into office; it was a blueprint for the
Chapter 25 Acts that followed it. He noted that he likes the idea of an interim report to generate further and more
detailed input and comments. He suggested keeping the illustrative projects in the report. He agreed that an
interim report makes the most sense because it moves the process forward while providing an opportunity for the
next administration to have ownership of the recommendations.
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Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of September 24th 2014
Mr. DePaola also likes the idea of an interim report. He stated that if you look at “Project Info,” there are $3 billion
in good projects across the state that meet the federal and state criteria, but there is a lack of funding to
implement them. He said the analysis is showing equity is generally acceptable so the focus will be on a process
for screening and prioritizing projects.
Mr. Silveira stated that the TFC issued three interim reports, which were essentially a collection of meeting
minutes. He noted that it is very time consuming to complete even an interim report with all the drafting, review,
editing, and process that goes into it.
Secretary Davey stated that an interim report of this Council would be more than a collection of meeting minutes
because there are a number of documents already prepared and underway that would likely be included. He will
reach out to the transportation committee chairs of the Legislature to ensure it is acceptable with them to take the
approach of an interim report.
7.
Next meeting
Mr. Hamwey noted that MassDOT will be addressing the comments and requests of the Council members and
preparing materials for the next meeting, which is scheduled for October 20 in Barnstable.
The meeting was adjourned by Secretary Davey.
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