MORGANTOWN — After nine months and some 1,300 public participants, the long-range vision for the Greater Morgantown Area’s transportation future is available for public review.
A draft version of the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Metropolitan Transportation Plan — formerly called the Long Range Transportation Plan — is available for review at mmmpo2050.com.
MPO’s are federally-designated agencies created by Congress in 1962 for the purpose of directing the transportation planning process for metropolitan areas with a population of at least 50,000 people.
The MTP is a federally-mandated document that must be updated every five years or so detailing how the MPO’s urbanized area transportation system will evolve from 2022-2050.
MPO staff, working with design and consulting firm Stantec, put together the draft plan as a starting point.
The MPO’s Policy Board, comprised of representatives from Morgantown, Granville, Star City, WVU, Mountain Line, the Monongalia County Board of Education, the West Virginia Department of Transportation and the Monongalia County Commission, will further refine the priorities identified in the plan when it meets in special session at 6 p.m. Thursday in Monongalia County Commission Chambers.
Policy Board Chairman Ron Justice laid out the reasoning for the special session following a recent presentation of the draft plan from Stantec’s Mike Rukowski.
“You’ve done great work. You’ve made great recommendations, but at the end of the day, this adoption lies with us, so we need to have that discussion,” Justice said. “Even though these are the recommendations, we can say there’s some other project we’d like to bump up or get more information.”
Following Thursday’s meeting, the policy board’s guidance will be incorporated into the plan available online, which lays out the MTP process, classifies projects into priority tiers, identifies funding mechanisms and explains the difference between the MTP and the MPO’s short-term Transportation Improvement Plan, which includes 19 scheduled projects totaling $118.9 million.
For the longer-term MTP, the body looks at prior 10-year trend of state and federal funding in order to fiscally constrain the process. It also factors cost over time into the projected totals for future projects.
Rukowski said the MTP is meant to evolve as funding projections and/or local development and transportation priorities change.
“Even though it’s snapshot today of the dollars we receive from the fed and state, you can use it as a living document to make good decisions,” he said.
The public review period for the draft MTP runs until May 10.
Questions or comments about the draft plan should be directed to MPO Executive Director Bill Austin at baustin@plantogether.org.
