Mobility planning is great (unless METRO is involved)
The Chronicle's Rad Sallee checks in on the area's mobility planning process:
Transportation planning is both hugely important and often mind-numbing.
Houston, for example, has a Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan (MTFP), an Urban Corridors plan and a Capital Improvement Program (CIP) that includes streets and roads. Some of those also are included in the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP).
And if that weren't enough, work started recently on a City of Houston Mobility Plan (CMP).
So, of course, a roomful of planners and interested others attended a Livable Houston luncheon last Wednesday about this latest effort to keep ahead of traffic.
The CMP, as Houston Planning Department Director Marlene Gafrick described it, is not so much a plan as "a tool for improving the other plans."
The latter are mainly lists of potential projects, with such nuts-and-bolts data as estimated costs, funding sources, start dates, etc., but they don't say much about the need for the listed facilities or their likely contributions to citywide mobility.
Now, when a project is proposed, "the mobility plan should allow us to analyze the impact on traffic, and where the traffic would go," Gafrick said.
Consultants led by Kimley-Horn & Associates and funded by $600,000 from the city, started work in April to create the tools by December, Gafrick said.
Imagine that -- when major projects are proposed, a quality mobility plan should consider the impact on traffic!
Can somebody tell METRO and Council about this revelation, because we are pretty sure this will be news to them!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/02/08 08:58 PM | Print |
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