Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting Notes of April 16, 2014
Draft Memorandum for the Record
Project Selection Advisory Council Meeting
April 16, 2014 Meeting
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM, Worcester Regional Transit Authority, Conference Room, 60 Foster Street,
Worcester, MA
Richard Davey, Chair, Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, Massachusetts Department of
Transportation (MassDOT)
1. Introductions
Secretary Davey introduced himself followed by the rest of the council members present in the room.
David Mohler, Deputy Secretary of Policy and Executive Director of Office of Transportation PlanningMassDOT, Frank DePaola, MassDOT Highway Administrator, Linda Dunleavy, Gubernatorial
Appointment representing the planning agencies and Franklin Regional Council of Governments, Jim
Lovejoy, Chairman of Board of Selectman, Town of Mt. Washington representing Mass. Municipal
Association and Berkshire MPO.
2. Vote to allow for Remote Participation
The council members voted to allow for Remote Participation in meetings. Secretary Davey called for
the vote with a motion from Linda Dunleavy followed by a second from Frank DePaola. The vote passed
allowing councilman John Pourbaix, Construction Industries of Massachusetts, to participate in the
meeting.
3.
Discussion of Preliminary Observations
Secretary Davey opens up the discussion of preliminary observations to the council members and asks
for any additional observations, comments, or feedbacks. Frank DePaola references page 8 from the
Preliminary Observations packet stating that the council needs to link in specific statutory goals found in
legislation regarding the specific performance criteria for transit and highway areas. Examples from the
legislation include reduction in wait times, reductions in accidents and fatalities. Map-21 federal
highway/transit goals also need to be linked into the criteria to ensure projects are advancing these
specific goals that have been set forth. The language is nice however it needs to be specific to the
legislative language. Secretary Davey agrees this is a good point.
Sheri Warrington, Manager of MPO Activities, Office of Transportation Planning – MassDOT provided
printouts of the legislation along with a list of the specific goals from Section 4 for the council members.
There are specific safety-related metrics laid out in the legislation that differ from the general language
describing the overall safety goal area. Frank suggested that a subset goal area for transit safety be
considered. He hopes that this will aid in the creation of a weighting system that will eventually enable
measuring of projects against the criteria. He said the legislation also mentions the need for a regional
measure. The council will need to determine the definition of “region,” and whether or not it will be
based on highway districts, MPO regions or some other yet to be defined region.
Frank said highway districts would make the most sense because this the level where most of the work
we do is completed and everyone understands the boundaries. David Mohler agreed by stating that
highway districts are well-defined and intuitive, whereas a map of an urbanized area could include five
MPOs, making it somewhat less intuitive. Jim Lovejoy commented that despite these statements MPOs
are organized around communities making it easier to involve the public and receive input from it. Jim
asks how the highway districts would coordinate a process to engage the public in order to receive input
regarding these goal criteria. He said since we are considering the criteria that the MPOs make while
trying to determine criteria for the Project Selection Advisory Council he thought a discussion would be
valuable. Frank mentions that currently MassDOT is present at all MPO meetings allowing for
participation with the MPOs.
Secretary Davey said he believes that the highway districts would be a helpful framework however at
the same time this is about deciding on regional criteria while ensuring equity across the regions.
Therefore the districts can be used to frame the regions but we will need to dig deeper into the
communities when considering prioritization of projects. He said a mix of all of these goal areas is
critical to ensure that for example prioritization is not based purely on job creation, because most likely,
in that case, a highly populated area would score higher than a less populated area.
Jim mentioned that what the council needs to think about is how to create this criteria and weighting
system in a way that evaluates projects from a regional perspective while ensuring finances are spread
evenly through districts while allowing for transparency on a community-level.
David reiterates the Secretary’s statement by saying there two types of equity being discussed: equity
between/among the districts and then equity within the individual districts.