Interview with an MPO - Center for Transportation Research and

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Mid-America Regional Council (MARC)
The researchers have interviewed state DOTs first, and then interviewed regional
governments to understand how functional silos can impact transportation resource
allocation decisions. This is the result of an interview with a large metropolitan area
regional government, the Regional Council of Governments, and the Metropolitan
Planning Office (MPO) for the Kansas City area. The Kansas City metropolitan area
consists of about 1.86 million people and is located along the Missouri River in both
Kansas and Missouri.
MARC was created by the local governments in the Kansas City region in the early
1970s, predating the federal requirement of having an MPO. MARC is the association
of city and county governments consisting of eight counties and 116 cities in the bi-state
(Kansas and Missouri) region. The MPO boundary is smaller than the MARC regional
area, and includes the three core counties around the city of Kansas City, and parts of the
four surrounding counties.
We discussed barriers to resource allocation with David Warm (Executive Director of
MARC), Mell Henderson (Director of Transportation), and Ron Achelpohl (Assistant
Director of Transportation). When asked about functional silos acting as barriers to
resource allocation, the respondents remarked on two issues that we believed to be both
interesting and insightful.
First, federal designation of funds was not generally seen as a barrier to allocating
resources for the best use. There were some technical programs where some of the rules
within the program created some inflexibility, but generally, federal funding designations
emphasized programs that might not otherwise receive funding, but should be
emphasized. For example, Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality (CMAQ) program
provides funding for worthy improvement, which achieves the program’s objective,
which might not otherwise receive funding. Federal designations and programs such as
the CMAQ program and Enhancement funding were seen as positive federal programs
leading to emphasis on valuable assets.
Second, the lack of viable state level growth and land use guidance creates an
impediment to good decision making on resource allocation. The lack of specific
direction for land use and growth leaves the MPO without a policy to focus development,
and sometimes this creates inefficient development or ineffective uses of transportation
resources.
About MARC and the Kansas City Area MPO
MARC’s Board of Directors consists of 32 locally elected leaders representing the eight
counties and 116 cities that are members of MARC. As a voluntary association, MARC
fosters better understanding and cooperation on issues that extend beyond the jurisdiction
of a single city, county or state. These issues include transportation, child care, aging,
emergency services, public safety and 9-1-1, environmental issues and a host of others.
MARC plays an active leadership role in strengthening the metropolitan community by
providing:
 A forum for addressing regional objectives and diverse community issues;
 Long-range planning and public policy coordination;
 Technical assistance and services to enhance the effectiveness of local
government.
MARC’s board of Directors is the final point of decision for the agency, but it is advised
by many committees and subcommittees. The principal transportation policy committee
is the Total Transportation Policy Committee (TTPC). The TTPC is supported by
various modal technical committees including the Aviation Committee, the BicyclePedestrian Advisory Committee, the Highway Committee, the Goods Movement
Committee, and the Transit Committee. These committees generally consist of a
mixture of elected and appointed officials and staff members representing interests of that
specific mode. The Total Transportation Policy Committee (TTPC) advises the MPO
Board of Directors on Transportation Issues, and is the policy board for the MPO. The
Total Transportation Policy Committee (TTPC) serves as the local decision making and
policy development body related to multi-modal transportation in the region.
TTPC also operates as a forum for state and federal officials to communicate with local
officials and representatives, as well as for citizens and members of the business
community to address local officials about transportation-related issues. Also advising
the TTPC are special interest committees. As an example, a transportation safety
committee has evolved from direction from the Total Transportation Committee to
include more safety oriented planning in the long range transportation plan. The
transportation safety committee has evolved through funding from the Missouri DOT to
include a safety advocacy which has generated some safety funds for the MPO,
principally for enforcement and education activities, but their activities could be related
to anything with respect to transportation safety.
Several other committees have evolved to provide direction on programming issues. For
example, the Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality (CMAQ) committee provides direction
on the programming of federal CMAQ funds, and other committees provide priories of
federal fund programming on bridges in Kansas and Missouri. A complete list of
committees is included in Table 1.
Table 1 Transportation Related Committees
Total Transportation Policy Committee (TTPC)
Transportation Legislative Advocacy Committee (TLAC)
Air Quality Forum
Aviation Committee
Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC)
Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality (CMAQ)
Goods Movement Committee
Highway Committee
Long Range Transportation Plan Sub-Committee (LRTPSC)
Kansas Transportation Enhancements Committee (TE)
Missouri Transportation Enhancements Committee (TE)
Operation Green Light Committees (OGL)
Special Transportation-Job Access Partnership
Kansas STP/Bridge Priorities Committee
Missouri STP/Bridge Priorities Committee
River Crossing Task Force
Transit Committee
Collaboration with partner governments at the State Level
As a bi-state organization, the MPO has to work within the policy and operational
framework of each state. The respondents were very careful in pointing out that Kansas
and Missouri were different and both states had very pragmatic reasons for their own
transportation policy frame work. Missouri is more of an urban state than Kansas;
therefore, has state level policies that mesh more naturally with regional urban
development. Kansas is more rural, and the Kansas City MPO at this time is the only
multi-county MPO in the state. Kansas deals more naturally with counties as subjurisdictions rather than regional governments. In Missouri, the Missouri DOT relies on
the MPO as a key building block in the development of the regional transportation
program, but not the only building block (local governments and internal needs are also
part of the program development). In Kansas, the MPO provides input to the
improvement programming process but is only considered one of several points of input.
The State of Missouri and the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) have
done a good job of making sure that their long-rang planning objectives correspond to the
long-rang planning objectives of the MPO, and the reverse is also true. For example,
many of the projects identified in the MPO plan on the state system often come from
MoDOT identified in a MoDOT sponsored corridor study. On the other hand, the MPO
may identify needs on the state highway that MoDOT will then in turn include as an
identified need, but not necessarily a priority for improvement or expansion on MoDOT’s
system. Since the MPO plan represents needs identified by both local and state
governments, some of the needs identified in the MPO plan for the state system many not
necessarily represent MoDOT’s own priorities.
Of the two state (Missouri and Kansas), MoDOT tends to have a much more long-term
and programmatic process for building the state’s transportation improvement program.
The state improvement program tends to roll new projects into the improvement program
and follows them through until completed. Coordination with the MPO plan for
MoDOT tends to be fairly mechanical.
The Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) has their own independent state
program that is generally tied to specific legislative initiatives. For example, Kansas is
currently in a ten year legislative initiative created in 1999 called the “Comprehensive
Transportation Plan” which specifically designates a few high profile projects and
identifies state level funding by category and mode.(1) The 1999 plan was preceded by a
an eight year plan developed in 1989. Under Kansas’s current legislative initiative, there
are several categories of projects, the key ones being systems expansion projects and
major modification projects. For these categories, KDOT solicits projects from
stakeholders, including the Kansas City Area MPO, and these projects are then
considered for potential inclusion in the statewide program. Through KDOT’s internal
process, projects are selected for the KDOT’s improvement program. KDOT is currently
reconsidering how local and regional government input is gathered. This initiative is
called the Partnership Program.
Collaboration with partner governments at the Local Level
There is very little that flows down from the MPO plan to local jurisdictions. The MPOs
greatest leverage over local projects is through the scoring of projects for federal funding
participation in local projects. Project that are purely locally funded that have impacts
across jurisdictions are generally evaluated for their impact on the entire system by the
MPO but if the local government is willing to fund the project then the project will
generally become part of the regional Transportation Improvement Plan. In reality, local
projects are selected by local government professionals with a great deal of care
regarding continuity of projects across jurisdictions. Local project selection does not
currently have a real planning context for determining priorities but the regional
government has common policy level direction.
MPO Assets and Asset Management
The Kansas City area MPO does not have any role in asset management of conventional
transportation assets other than what is implied through the project selection process.
Currently, through the federal funding resource allocation process, local jurisdictions
must develop a description of the condition of the asset being improved or reconstructed,
but there is no uniformity in these assessments. The MPO would like to have a greater
role in determining whether the appropriate level of effort is being spent on maintaining
assets to reach a desirable balance between maintenance and capital spending, but does
not currently have the resources or the authority to support asset management of
transportation assets.
The first and only asset that MARC will own has evolved from the Operation Green
Light program. This program involves the cooperation of about 20 jurisdictions on the
improved management of the traffic control system to create greater throughput on
signalized arterial streets. MARC will lead the development of traffic signal plans either
in cooperation with the local jurisdiction or by themselves. Ultimately a communication
system will tie each of the individual arterials traffic control systems into a signal
command center where a MARC employee will manage the system and change or adjust
the signal timing plans and make modifications to the signal timing plans to respond to
incidents and special events.
Summary
The general purpose of metropolitan government is to coordinate and bridge between
programs and governments; therefore, allowing silos to create misallocations of resources
by the MPO or MARC would seem to be antithetical to its mission. However, activities
which are outside of its policy authority may create misallocations of resources. For
example, the lack of state level growth control and land use policy creates inefficiencies
in development patterns and may cause public services to be more costly. However,
MARC’s willingness to spearhead the Operation Green Light programs is a clear
example of the regional government playing a leadership role in bridging jurisdictional
silos.
1. “Graves inks transportation bill: Governor says legislation will change face of
Kansas,” Topeka, Capital Journal, May 14, 1999,
http://cjonline.com/stories/051499/cyb_transplan.shtml
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