CMP Committee of the Boston Region MPO                                                                          

Draft Memorandum for the Record

Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization Meeting

September 18, 2014 Meeting

9:00 AM – 9:50 AM, State Transportation Building, Conference Rooms 2&3, 10 Park Plaza, Boston

Chairperson Lourenço Dantas, Massachusetts Port Authority

Decisions

No decisions were made at this meeting.

Meeting Agenda

Introduction

Everyone who was present at the CMP Committee meeting introduced themselves (see below for attendance list).

Approval of Minutes of August 21, 2014, CMP Committee Meeting

The meeting minutes of the August 21, 2014, meeting were approved.

Discussion of Federal Fiscal Year 2015 CMP tasks

The federal fiscal year (FFY) ends September 30 and the next FFY will begin October 1. A work plan will need to be written for the next fiscal year to determine what CMP tasks will be pursued. The budget for FFY 2015 is $92,000, which is significantly lower than the previous fiscal year’s budget. Because of the budgetary limitations, we will need to select the tasks that should be appear in this (FFY 2015) work plan and the tasks that should be postponed until a later fiscal year.

Possible tasks in FFY 2015

1. Support CMP Committee and additional activities as needed (estimated cost: $13,000)
2. Create roadway congestion scans (see below for estimated cost)
   • If created just for express-highways (to be represented on the Express-Highway Performance Dashboard) – estimated cost: $22,000.
   • If created for express-highways and 15 priority arterials (arterials with more than 45,000 AADT) – estimated cost: $44,000.
   • If created for all CMP roadways – estimated cost: $105,000
3. Analyze the regional economic costs of congestion using INRIX data (estimated cost: $21,000)
4. Compose a memo that documents all INRIX-related activities and findings (estimated cost: $14,000)
5. Produce a Congestion Management Strategies Toolbook (estimated cost: $21,000)
6. Update the monitored intersection database (estimated cost: unknown)
7. Conduct a sensitivity analysis of MBTA park-and-ride lots (estimated cost: $20,000–$35,000)
8. Analyze MassDOT park-and-ride lot utilization and capacity (estimated cost: $12,500, including $1,500 in direct costs)

Questions and comments

Comments about Task 2:

The CMP currently monitors only in the AM and PM peak periods. INRIX collects data during all time periods. Therefore, the congestion scans indicate what time of day a roadway is congested. Congestion scans may reveal more for arterials than for express-highways because many planners are already aware of the problem locations on express-highways.

There may be arterials that have less than 45,000 AADT that may be suitable for congestion scans; therefore, a better threshold for conducting a scan might be 35,000 AADT. The thresholds for arterials to appear on congestion scan may be flexible, but as the number of arterials to be analyzed increases, so does the cost.

Comment about Task 3:

For Task 3, we will need to develop our own methodology for determining the cost of congestion that will customized for the Boston region. Other sources such as the Texas Transportation Institute may be used, but these sources must be taken cautiously before using these sources, as they might not be suitable for the Boston region.

Comments about Task 5:

Question: Is Task 5 already included in the Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP)? If not, is there a plan to incorporate this task into the LRTP?

Answer: Task 5 focuses more on local strategies and what the impact of congestion would be on implementing low-cost strategies than on large-scale strategies. The LRTP focuses more on strategies that are on a regional level. However, Task 5 will be a good follow up study to the LRTP needs assessment in a future fiscal year.

Comment about Task 7 (Conduct a price sensitivity analysis of MBTA park-and-ride-lots):

The MPO should meet with the MBTA and find out what the MBTA’s interest level is before Task 7 is pursued.

General discussion about comments

Question: Will the budget be sufficient for conducting all of these proposed tasks?

Answer: No, however we can select the most important tasks for this federal fiscal year and postpone the other tasks to a future fiscal year. Also, the studies that will be performed in the upcoming fiscal year can be used as a building block for future studies.

Question: Is there any budget for public relations and outreach for the MPO’s Web application?

Answer: Within the CMP, there is no budget for performing outreach with the Web application. However, one outreach-related idea is giving the website its own domain name, different form the domain name of the MPO website. Other ideas include purchasing advertisements around the entire Boston region. It is recommended that advertisements for all MPO staff CTPS functions be discussed in the subsequent MPO meeting.

Conclusions

Before this meeting, MPO staff thought that Tasks 1 through 4 would be suitable for the next federal fiscal year. At the end of the meeting, the committee agreed that Tasks 1 through 3 would be pursued in the current federal fiscal year, with the money saved by not implementing Task 4 allocated to the selected tasks.

Next steps:

• Allocate money from Task 4 to Tasks 1, 2 and 3.
• Draft a CMP work plan for FFY 2016 that will includes details about Tasks 1, 2 and 3.
• Send the CMP work plan to the MPO for review and approval at its October 16 meeting. . [At the time of this meeting, Committee members thought that the work plan would have to be approved by the MPO, but found out later that MPO approval was not required.]

Other Business

There was none.

Adjournment

Attendance