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SUMMARY Metropolitan Planning Organizations: Strategies for Future Success A History of Change and Adaptation This report presents strategies to facilitate the future success of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) throughout the United States. MPOs have been a steady presence in the metropolitan areas of the United States for 50 years or longer in some instances. MPOs were conceived and have persevered because transportation networks and travel itself oper- ate at scales larger than any one city or county. Sub-regional travel moves at this scale to take advantage of economic circumstances: people may choose to live further away from their jobs to afford a larger home; freight originates from distant ports or modes; and businesses locate at regional nodes or smaller towns to take advantage of savings in travel costs, access to consumers, or simply because it is cheaper than locating in the central business district of a large city. These concepts and the federal rules that form the underlying foundations of metro- politan planning at MPOs are fairly durable assumptions, but the MPOs themselves have evolved in a myriad of ways to respond to localized needs over several decades of operation, including the size of staffing and other resources (see Figure S-1). Some MPOs are more involved in land-use decision-making to better link development practices and transporta- tion services. Some are focused on system preservation, roadway expansion, or facilitating active modes of travel; smaller MPOs may be working hard to produce the basic long-range plans as well as guiding work programs, board meetings, and improvement programs that are stipulated by federal law. MPOs and their member governments have endured, and even thrived, under substan- tive changes: performance-based planning, management systems, environmental justice, air quality conformity, trends toward more workers per household, trends toward preferences for automobile travel, and trends away from automobile travel to walking and biking. Prior ities have shifted as wellâfrom urban living to suburban and back to urban again; from shopping in malls to shopping online; from working in factories to offices or at home, a more common practice during the global pandemic starting in 2020. The New Challenges Are Different Source: 2016 survey with 70% of MPOs responding; Kramer With this degree of change and the durability of MPOs through it, the temptation is to et al. 2017. gloss over the current challenges as simply the next wave in a recurring cycle of changes. Figure S-1.ââMedian However, several concurrent forces are posing unique challenges to MPOs now, in addition staff sizes of full-time to some concerns that have not gone away. During this study, the United States experienced employees by size levels of political dissatisfaction and polarization that potentially influenced some of the of population in engagement results. The Black Lives Matter movement is the latest attempt to raise awareness planning area. 1 Â
2ââ Metropolitan Planning Organizations: Strategies for Future Success of persistent disparities in personal resources and opportunities for millions of Americans, some of which the TRB has publicly acknowledged are influenced by transportation-related decisions. Then, in early 2020 after this study had commenced, news came that hundreds of people had become sick in a province of China and that the virus, COVID-19, had the potential to spread rapidly to other places and people. A Study of Adaptation Had to Adapt The outcomes and products of this study were substantially shaped by the COVID-19 coronavirus; its attendant impacts shifted the research team away from more traditional case studies to conducting Regional Roundtables and Information Forums (webinars open to the public) to discuss important topics and assess the state of coordination with MPOs and their partners, respectively. The view at the time, while uncertain, created the sense of opportunity to understand at a firsthand level how MPOs were adapting in real time to these substantial challenges. An example of this is the large survey conducted in early- and mid-2020 for this project (see Appendix E). About half of the 129 respondents gave their replies before the pandemic lockdowns occurred, and about half responded during the full lockdown. The responses showed some differences but also gave the study process some time to reconsider the planned Phase II work program and how it could be adjusted to this new reality. For instance, one such change was that expert panelists on eight very different, but often interconnected, topics that MPOs identified in Phase I research of the literature and early conference engagement replaced detailed case studies. The MPOs frequently discussed in literature reviews (including the one developed for this project) are often large and possess resources and specialized talents not available to the majority of their peers, so input from a range of MPOs was sought throughout the study. A database of best practices, termed âInnovation Database,â was modified to be more robust, and each of its 108 records is searchable by region and MPO size as well as keywords. Since MPOs noted that communication and coordination with partners were challenged (an ever-present concern for many MPOs), eight Regional Roundtables were prepared and conducted involving people from a dozen states and nearly 20 MPOs with the intention of understanding how collaboration works and the best practices for making it better. In this way, at a time of heightened separation, canceled conferences, and two-dimensional com- munication across digital divides, outreach was conducted that benefited the research process and outcomes. An unanticipated benefit, and one that the research team hopes becomes a more com- monplace occurrence in large-scale studies like this, is that communication was actually strengthened as a result of the study. Important information was shared through Informa- tion Forums conducted during the study rather than simply absorbing the limited time and resources of MPOs and their partner agency staff through surveys and telephone interviews. Finally, 12 issues were chosen to create the framework for the Toolkit for the 21st Cen- tury, which consists of two-page guides that, like the Innovation Database, are designed to be easily accessed and provide relevant resources to MPOs of varying sizes and contexts. General Organization of This Report After this summary, Section 1 of the report presents a description of the Innovation Data- base of best practices, short summaries of videos from the forums (both available online), and the Toolkit for the 21st Century (included in the report at the end of Section 1). These tools
Summaryââ3Â Â were designed to be highly user-oriented, which was one of the conditions stressed during this project and by those providing input during the early stages of the study. Section 2 delves into key issues facing MPOs now and in the near future, then shares how the study design was conceivedâand then reconceived as a result of the global pandemic and cultural eventsâto address what MPOs told the research team were important matters. These topics were arranged into 12 functional areas and four categories (External Partner- ships, Access to Resources, MPO Product Relevancy, and External Change Forces) to orga- nize the preliminary findings of MPO issues. Key findings pertaining to these categories were derived from hours of discourse conducted during eight Regional Roundtables and eight Information Forums as well as an extensive review of related literature. Conclusions and directions for future research are followed by five appendices detailing the specific out- comes of literature reviews and engagement efforts.
