If you’re a regular TPB News reader, you may have heard of the Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP). It is one of those documents that metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) like the TPB are required to produce every year. But what exactly is it and what does it tell you about the work that we do?
The UPWP is an annual statement that helps identify the MP0’s planning priorities and how it intends to carry them out for the upcoming fiscal year. The federal government requires all MPOs to develop UPWPs to govern work programs that spend Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration metropolitan transportation planning funding.
As the federally designated MPO for the Washington region, the TPB receives federal funding that is specifically allocated to the metropolitan transportation planning process. The TPB’s budget is $18.8 million. This budget funds 50 staff members who provide technical and professional advice, consultants to supplement that staff, and various other direct and indirect costs.
The TPB carries out three main activities. First, the TPB works with its member jurisdictions to meet federal transportation planning regulations. Second, the TPB provides a forum for regional coordination. And third, TPB staff provide technical resources to assist member jurisdictions and agencies in their decision-making. All the work laid out in the UPWP can be categorized in those three main areas.
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The TPB is a forum for regional coordination
The TPB has about 14 subcommittees and brings together over 44 member agencies and jurisdictions to the TPB. The subcommittees help the board and staff to make sure we’re aligned with the board and our member jurisdiction’s needs. TPB staff also facilitates and implements various regional initiatives. This year, one of the TPB’s priorities is climate change. Our greenhouse gas planning activities including providing technical support for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s Climate and Energy Committee’s (CEEPC’s) climate action planning activities, monitoring developments related to the Transportation and Climate Initiative, and continuing work on the SAFE Vehicle Rule.
TPB’s staff also seeks to enhance transportation and land use coordination through the Transportation and Land Use connections Program (TLC). This technical assistance program has provided TPB member jurisdictions with consultant support for 130 projects since 2007, for a grand total of $5,275,00. TPB staff also provide technical resources including travel monitoring, travel demand forecasting, and mobile emissions planning.
What’s new for FY 2021?
The upcoming fiscal year brings new exciting projects to the TPB. First, we’re setting the stage to update our long-range transportation plan, Visualize 2045. As part of that update process we will be kicking off another public outreach campaign this summer. We’re also updating some of the technical work that we do. When we develop the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) we must collect submissions from all jurisdictions in the region to be included in the TIP. To make this project more efficient, we have been working with a contractor to create a database to make it easier for jurisdiction staff in the region to submit information for the TIP. This new database is called Project InfoTrak and will be fully functional and available to facilitate the TIP process between the TPB, the departments of transportation, and transit agencies.
Over the past few years the TPB has made safety on our roadways in the region a priority and this has continued this year. Last year, the board requested that staff study safety in the region. Information from the FY 2020 Safety Study will be presented over the coming months. TPB staff will also continue to look at strategies that are most effective in addressing major cause of safety problems on the region’s roadways.
For the once-a-decade Regional Travel Survey, staff are planning to develop visualizations of the findings and make datasets from the survey available to the region to support planning studies and analyses. As a convening body in the region we will also be bringing people together to work through emerging issues that are impacting regional transportation planning, such as connected and autonomous vehicles, bike and scooter sharing, also called micro-mobility, and strategies for managing curbside parking, deliveries, and more, also called curbside management.
Also coming up in the next year, plans to collect and analyze data on travel trends in the region with visualizations to help show what the data says. Staff are also working on updating the travel demand modeling tool. The model is important in forecasting how people in the region will get around and how our future system may impact the region.
At its March 18 meeting, the TPB will take up the UPWP for approval. You can review a draft of the FY 2021 UPWP to check everything that the TPB plans to be working in the upcoming year.
Get the UPWP briefing materials from the February TPB meeting