JOINT HENRY COUNTY/CITIES TRANSPORTATION PLAN
CHAPTER VII: CTP GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
In response to the Shared Transportation and Land Use Vision agreed upon by Henry County and its
Cities, the CTP Team proposed an initial set of potential CTP goal statements and objectives, which were
then refined based on public and stakeholder comments. Stakeholders included elected officials, County
and City staff, and representatives of local business, other public agencies and interest groups. In
particular, the Shared Agenda Workshop discussed previously was an important event to determine
which of the many potential goals are the most important in Henry County. Based upon feedback from
the Shared Agenda Workshop, Technical Steering and Public Involvement Advisory Committee meetings,
and other stakeholder comments, the following goals and objectives were identified to guide the CTP.
Transportation Plan Goals and Objectives
The County and the Cities agreed that identifying a relatively small set of over-arching transportation
goals with a manageable number of related objectives, most of which are quantifiable, would serve the
purposes of their jurisdictions best. Important distinctions need to be made among goals, objectives and
performance measures.
Goals:
Goals are fairly generalized statements that indicate a desired end state or
characteristic of a system. “Improving mobility” or “preserving
environmental quality” would be examples of goals. These statements do
not specify how these actions would be done.
Objectives:
Objectives are more specific statements of how a plan will achieve the
goal. For example, the goal “improving mobility” could be achieved by
“encouraging the use of alternative modes of travel, such as walking,
biking, using public transportation, etc.” Usually, there are several
objectives associated with a goal.
Performance Measures:
These measures relate to a variety of issues that might be relevant to a
particular alternative transportation investment strategy or project. They
provide an understanding of the impacts of the action or decision under
consideration. Performance measures help decision-makers determine
which of several options is best.
Five (5) overall transportation-related goals were identified to guide the development and
recommendations of the CTP. They included:
Goal 1 - Enhance Mobility for People and Goods in Henry County and Its Cities.
Objective 1.1: Preserve the investment made in the County’s existing transportation system.
Objective 1.2: Minimize congestion on the road network.
Objective 1.3: Improve safety on the road network.
Objective 1.4: Encourage use of alternative modes.
Objective 1.5: Provide the most cost effective improvements in transportation system performance.
Goal 2 - Enhance Accessibility for People and Goods in Henry County and its Cities.
Objective 2.1: Enhance the connectivity of key County activity centers.
Objective 2.2: Enhance access to freight land uses.
Objective 2.3: Better manage road access to adjacent land uses.
Goal 3 - Reinforce Growth Patterns that Meet County and City Visions.
Objective 3.1: Preserve the County’s rural areas.
Page VII-1
JOINT HENRY COUNTY/CITIES TRANSPORTATION PLAN
Objective 3.2: Provide transportation investments that reinforce the land use plans and development
visions of the County and its Cities.
Objective 3.3: Promote development that is fiscally sustainable (that is, that uses existing
infrastructure or that helps pay for new infrastructure).
Objective 3.4: Preserve and enhance the character of the historic and existing communities.
Goal 4 - Protect and Enhance the County’s and Cities’ Environmental Quality.
Objective 4.1: Minimize air quality impacts of transportation investment.
Objective 4.2: Preserve the County’s natural and environmentally sensitive areas.
Goal 5 - Ensure Coordination among the Planning and Development Activities of the County, its
Cities, the School District, the Water and Sewerage Authority, and other involved organizations.
The fifth goal addresses a major concern of citizens and stakeholders expressed throughout the CTP
planning process to better coordinate transportation and land use decisions among the various levels
of government and institutions involved in transportation and development decisions to create better
outcomes for citizens. This particular goal does not lend itself to quantifiable objectives; however,
Chapter XII will identify strategies to achieve this overall goal.
The goals and objectives were identified through the public outreach and stakeholder involvement effort
that included elected officials, community leaders, and citizens. While some of the goals and
corresponding objectives are conducive to quantitative measurement, e.g., number of lane-miles
operating at different levels of service or number of daily congested hours, others are more difficult to
quantify. An example is Objective 3.2 relating to the consistency between the proposed transportation
investment and the desired land use plans for the County and its Cities. Thus, in several cases, the
actual measure will be qualitative in nature.
Some objectives are hard to assess even with qualitative measures. For example, Goal 5, which
encourages closer coordination between the planning and development activities of the County and its
Cities, is not dependent on any one investment strategy or recommended Plan. In fact, this goal can be
achieved without any particular plan in place. Thus, the transportation plan will accomplish this goal, and
Objectives 2.3 and 3.4 that relate to access management and preserving the character of the County’s
cities, by recommending specific strategies that will help achieve the intent of the Plan’s goals.
Performance Measures
The vision and goals of the CTP articulate broad concepts for the future of the County and its Cities. The
objectives each represent a statement that can be used to measure the success of potential
transportation strategies and projects. The objectives above have also guided the planning team’s efforts
in determining the county-wide needs.
The planning team used performance measures to define needs and examine potential strategies at the
system, or county-wide network, level. The team also produced performance measures for individual
projects such as transit routes, roadway operations improvements, and road extensions or widenings.
Performance measures that were used to identify critical corridors in Chapter III are good examples of the
measures used to define the system wide needs of the county. These congestion measures, along with
others, helped the team prioritize projects for the CTP.
The needs assessment section of the Appendix, called Transportation System Network Evaluation,
details how performance measures were used in conjunction with stakeholder and public input to define
the corridors that will be critical to mobility in the County into the future.
Mobility
The first goal of the plan relates to the mobility within the County and its Cities. Mobility refers to the ease
in which a person can move from one place to another. The performance measures described below
measure the degree to which potential strategies might enhance mobility.
Page VII-2
JOINT HENRY COUNTY/CITIES TRANSPORTATION PLAN
Congestion
Congestion is a major factor impacting the mobility of people and goods in Henry County, as well as the
quality of life of its citizens.
Congestion measures help in the understanding of travel conditions:
•
How severe is congestion during the worst hour of a typical weekday? Is the road simply crowded,
does traffic stop and go, or is it gridlock? Peak hour level of service gives insight into this.
•
How many vehicles would be impacted by the congestion during the entire rush hour period? Are
there only a few vehicles impacted for a few minutes, or are several vehicles stuck in traffic for an
extended period of time? Vehicle hours of delay gives insight into this.
•
How long is traffic flow congested during a typical weekday? Is a road only congested for an hour or
two, or will the congestion be unavoidable? Duration of congestion gives insight into this.
These measures were used to quantify the effectiveness of each project in addressing congestion in
Henry County.
Safety
Safety is another key aspect of mobility. High crash locations pose a risk to drivers and can have
detrimental system effects, including increased congestion and strains on overall mobility. In addition to
the congestion measures mentioned above, safety measures are also used to examine the effectiveness
of specific projects. The study team looked at crash records on state roads from GDOT as well as
records on other roads (except for interstates) from the ARC (CARE) Crash database for 2002-2004. The
measure used was based on the frequency of crashes in the area of the proposed improvement.
Use of Alternative Modes
Effective alternative modes of transportation provide mobility benefits for the transit dependent, choice
transit riders, and non-riders alike. Many different strategies exist to encourage Henry County citizens to
walk, use bicycles, carpool, or take transit. In order to measure a project’s effectiveness in encouraging
these alternative modes, the study team addressed whether a project served proposed activity centers in
the county or existing priority areas such as schools, libraries, and existing downtowns. Using a refined
version of the ARC travel demand model, the study team also projected how different transit routes might
serve trips within the county and to regional destinations. Those routes that carried the most projected
trips (and therefore potentially removed the most cars from the roadways) were given priority.
Accessibility
Goal 2 of the CTP is to “Enhance Accessibility for People and Goods in Henry County and its Cities.”
Accessibility relates to the transportation choices one has such as driving, walking, biking, taking transit,
etc. Accessibility is another term referring to the ease in which a person can access land uses or
destinations. By mapping activity centers and proposed projects (including transit routes and road
improvements), the CTP Team was able to measure the potential improvements of each project on
accessibility. However, it should be noted that project implementation and design strategies relate to
accessibility. The Plan will recommend strategies to manage access where mobility is a primary concern
and also to provide access to complimentary land uses where appropriate.
In addition to enhancing mobility and accessibility for people, the team also looked at measures gauging
improvements with regard to freight movement. Freight centers and freight routes were mapped so that
these features could be used in the project evaluation process. Truck-based freight activity has an impact
on Henry County congestion and is critical to the regional economy. Projects that improve known freight
routes were given priority for their potential to keep vehicles moving on these routes, benefiting both
travelers and regional commerce.
Page VII-3
JOINT HENRY COUNTY/CITIES TRANSPORTATION PLAN
Transportation-Land Use Connection
Goal 3 of the Plan is to “Reinforce Growth Patterns that Meet County and City Visions.” While this is
primarily a qualitative goal, the team did seek measures of cost effectiveness, service to proposed
Comprehensive Plan activity centers, and preservation of historical, environmental, and cultural
resources. Cost effectiveness is discussed below. A measure of whether or not a proposed project
served activity centers and avoided sensitive areas was included in the prioritization process.
Project Costs and Funding Estimates
Other important objectives of the Joint Transportation Plan relate to cost effective solutions. The project
team estimated costs of alternative strategies in order to measure the financial needs against projected
resources in the County.1
Some of the measures mentioned above relate to the cost effectiveness of a potential improvement.
Crashes are very expensive, and therefore safety improvements have the potential to reduce costs.
Congestion also can be related directly to costs to citizens as well as increased maintenance costs
related to wear and tear on roadways and other infrastructure. For example, delay relates directly to the
value of time lost in congestion. Therefore, a projection of vehicle-hours of delay saved by a project
along its extents versus the cost of the project is one way to estimate cost effectiveness.
Environmental Impacts
Goal 4 of the plan is to “Protect and enhance the County’s and Cities’ environmental quality.” As
mentioned above, a measure of impacts to sensitive areas was included in project prioritization. Several
congestion measures also relate indirectly to air quality impacts, as does the amount of travel that occurs
in the County.
A detailed table of performance measures for each objective of the plan is located in the
Appendix.
1
Transportation project costs were estimated with the latest tool from the Atlanta Regional Commission
as of October 2006.
Page VII-4