Regional Transportation Planning

CapitalWays Regional Transportation Plan - A new regional transportation plan is under development for central Ohio and will be released in May 2008. The plan will address transportation projects and costs, public involvement, environmental and social equity issues. Other issues such as land development, freight and technology will also be included. All highway, transit, bikeway and pedestrian projects must be on the transportation plan to be implemented with federal funds.

2030 Regional Transportation Plan - The MORPC Regional Transportation Plan covers a transportation planning area that consists of Delaware County, Franklin County and parts of northwest Fairfield County and southwest Licking County. A new plan is produced every four years. Highway, transit, bikeway and pedestrian projects to be built with federal funds must be a part of the transportation plan.

The regional transportation plan provides documentation for MORPC's continuing, comprehensive and cooperative planning process. This process addresses many areas of transportation and related issues including public involvement, operations and maintenance, project costs and funding issues, air quality, congestion management, and transportation concerns related to low income and minority persons (also known as environmental justice). Land development issues, the travel demand modeling process, freight planning, and intelligent transportation systems are some of the other major topics in the plan.

Transportation Improvement Program - MORPC manages the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), a four-year schedule of highway, bikeway and mass transit projects that have identified sources of funding and are presently in some stage of project development. The current TIP is for state fiscal years 2008-2011 with projects in MORPC’s transportation planning area (Delaware and Franklin counties, Bloom and Violet townships in Fairfield County, and Etna Township and Pataskala in Licking County), proposed for construction from July 2007 through June 2011. Approximately $1.5 billion in funds will flow to highway, mass transit and bikeway/pedestrian projects over the four years. Projects must be included in the TIP to be eligible for federal funding.

Environmental Planning – MORPC’s transportation and environmental planning efforts work together to ensure that the projects in the Regional Transportation Plan and TIP maintain air quality standards. The process that shows this is called a conformity determination. The air quality documentation for the TIP FY 2008-2011 and 2030 T-Plan provides more details and the documentation for the most recent conformity determination.

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) - MORPC’s Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) program helps central Ohio communities coordinate transportation technology projects across jurisdictions (e.g. traffic signal systems). A planning tool that helps the region do this is the federally mandated Central Ohio Regional ITS Architecture that MORPC maintains.