FABB Blog

On behalf of the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment

Dear Interested Citizen,

The movement of people and goods is important for Virginia’s vitality and competitiveness. As we plan for a pipeline of short-range improvements to 2025, we are also scenario planning for 2040. We need to understand your ideas and concerns regarding transportation planning across our state.

Every four years, the Code of Virginia directs the Commonwealth Transportation Board, with assistance from the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI), to conduct a comprehensive review of transportation needs in a Statewide Transportation Plan – VTrans. The development of VTrans2040 was initiated in spring 2014. The 2025 Virginia Multimodal Transportation Plan (VMTP) is part of the overall VTrans plan. As part of the development of the VMTP, a comprehensive statewide needs assessment was completed. The VMTP Needs Assessment includes multimodal transportation capacity and operations needs at three travel market scales and included a statewide assessment of safety needs.

The assessment led to draft 2025 Recommendations as follows:

• Over 800 statewide needs identified in the Needs Assessment were consolidated across travel markets, 
• The resulting 170 total consolidated needs statewide were evaluated and divided into 3 Tiers,
• Tiering was completed by combining a data-driven “criticality assessment” of the consolidated Needs with an outreach process, in which regional and local stakeholders and the public correlated each Need with VTrans goals and both the importance and urgency of each Need to individual regions, 
• The resulting Tiered 2025 Needs were shared with the public in the CTB Fall 2016 Public Meetings, and
• The Tier 1 needs were compared to existing plans and programs to identify projects to meet the needs, and in some cases, new project ideas were drafted.

The Draft 2025 Recommendations for Tier 1 needs are currently being presented to all MPO and/or PDC regions in Virginia. All the materials from these meetings are available at http://www.vtrans2040.com/Pages/Recommendations.aspx.

Since this is the first time VTrans has included project-level recommendations in a Multimodal Transportation Plan, we are eager to receive feedback on the Tier 1 needs that address the VTrans Vision, Goals, Objectives and Guiding Principles (found here).

Please share your comments on the Draft 2025 recommendations using this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VMTP2025 (A link is also provided on the vtrans2040.com page).
The survey will take about ten minutes to complete.

Comments will be gathered through March 10, 2017.

VTrans2040 is a vital project for clarifying Virginia’s transportation vision, goals, and objectives, and identifying the guiding principles and investments in infrastructure and services that will carry Virginia’s transportation system forward for the future. The Plan includes two major pieces – the VTrans2040 Vision and the VTrans2040 Multimodal Transportation Plan (VMTP). The Virginia Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI) has been developing the VMTP, in particular the Transportation Needs Assessment. This Needs Assessment takes on added importance as a result of House Bill 2. Only projects that help address a need identified in the statewide transportation plan will be considered for funding under the statewide prioritization process.

 We need your input! The public meeting will include interactive discussions about the Regional Networks, Corridors of Statewide Significance (CoSS) and Urban Development Areas (UDAs). OIPI and its consultant team have already been working one-on-one with 15 regions in the Commonwealth through the MPOs in each region, and the purpose of this meeting is to bring several regions together to continue the discussions and get critical input from each region, as well as share information and updates relevant to the Transportation Needs Assessment.