MORGANTOWN — After well over a year as the last remaining holdout, the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Policy Board appears ready to relinquish some control over federally funded projects to the West Virginia Division of Highways.
The change would allow the DOH to group small and routine projects into pots of money that would preclude the need for the MPO to approve every small federally funded project before it could begin.
MPOs are federally mandated transportation policy-making bodies. The MPO’s lone authority is that it must approve the use of federal funds within its area. It also serves as the venue through which the public can address the use of federal transportation funds.
MPO Executive Director Bill Austin said the local body is the last of the state’s eight MPOs to approve the concept of “groupable” projects that could be undertaken without MPO policy board approval, and therefore public input.
The snag, he explained, was a lack of clarity in exactly what kinds of projects could be grouped and exactly what kinds of projects could not.
Those lists, he said, have since been negotiated between the DOH and the West Virginia Association of Planning Organizations, which he chairs.
Examples of typical projects that could be considered for the grouping process include small resurfacing projects, minor traffic operations projects such as pavement markings, shoulder improvements, fencing, skid treatments and guard rails.
No project costing more than $10 million can be grouped.
Regardless of cost, if a project is determined to be “regionally significant” it cannot be grouped. Also, projects that cannot meet categorical exclusion guidelines for environmental studies and air quality analysis are excluded from the program, as are projects that require “more than a minor amount” of right-of-way acquisition or require the closure of existing roads, bridges or ramps resulting in traffic disruptions.
These represent just some of the guidelines.
“It was clear that the kind of projects policy board members will get phone calls about are the kind of projects we want to make sure the policy board members have input on,” Austin said.
In other news, the MPO wants your input as it looks to lay out the area’s transportation priorities via a major update to its Metropolitan Transportation Plan.
To that end, a virtual public symposium is scheduled for Thursday.
There will be two sessions — from noon-1 p.m. and from 5:30 -7 p.m. at tinyurl.com/3f9r3hr8. The meeting ID is 424 982 0429 and the password is 8675309.
Additionally, there’s an online survey and interactive map at plantogether.org where you can identify the challenges and opportunities you see in the local transportation network.
The updated plan will detail how the MPO’s urbanized area transportation system will evolve from 2022-2050.
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