The technical committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization, SKATS, meets tomorrow the 8th, and they have a number of interesting details to note.
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| Is it time to center climate more in Goal 7? |
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| From RTSP to MTP |
As they kick off the process to write a new plan, formerly known as the Regional Transportation System Plan, and now renamed and even "rebranded" as the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, there is an opportunity to revive efforts to include a stronger emphasis on climate and emissions in the plan.
The MTP is revised every four years. During 2018 in the lead up to the 2019 document, the City of Salem and advocates requested a stronger Goal 7 on emissions reduction, and the final language, which you can see at top, was watered down intentionally.
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| Even the bankers are coming around on climate last week in the paper |
But now for the 2023 document, there is a new window of opportunity.
The project pages:
Despite promising language in the letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission on the tranche of new Federal funds, the MPO continues to look backwards at 20th century evaluation styles internally. Two current moments show this.
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| Still smuggling congestion relief as climate measure |
In looking at some projects, already approved in earlier rounds of funding, they continued to see congestion relief as an appropriate use of climate funds. This is based on the canard of idling cars stuck in traffic as being the prime source of emissions, and if we just speeded them along we would make a real dent in our emissions.
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| When we ease congestion, driving goes up (Jamey Volker, PSU TREC talk) |
But, as we saw in Friday's presentation on induced demand, that's not how it works.
The other moment was at the Policy Committee last month. The TAC had punted a recommendation on scoring candidate projects (in the separate 2024-2029 funding cycle) to the PC, saying the weighting of factors really was a policy matter and that they should be the ones making the call.
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| A very minor tweak to the weighting factors |
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| Comparison of weighing factors |
Here was a comparison made for last month. The top set, with "weighing factor equal," is our base, and if we adjust "safety" to a factor of two, the relative rankings of the projects remains the same. Pedestrian crossings gets 8 instead of 6 points; McGilchrist gets 11 instead of 10; and the Transit vehicles gets 10 instead of 9.
This does not seem to be a very meaningful difference. If there are 10 equal weighting factors, bumping one of them to a 2x weight means the others are weighted at 1/11th, about 9%, and safety is at 2/11ths. Other factors will swallow up the change. Here, this looks more cosmetic and oriented to spin and press - "look, we increased the safety factor!" - than substantive.
The Technical Advisory Committee zooms at 1:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday the 8th. The agenda and meeting packet can be downloaded here.
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| Meeting info |
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