Metro’s Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation approved an update to the RTP on Oct. 18. The committee approval is one of the final steps before it goes to the Metro Council for a final decision.
The regional transportation plan “is looking out for the future and setting a vision for what we are trying to get to,” Kim Ellis, RTP project manager at Metro, said during a presentation to the committee.
RTP Program Manager Kim Ellis presents the Regional Transportation Plan to JPACT.
The committee also approved four supporting strategies that will be added to the RTP – safety, freight, transit and emerging technology.
The action is the end result of three years of hard work by planners, the Metro Council, JPACT, the Metro Policy Advisory Committee, business and community leaders and many others.
Since summer 2015, these groups have worked collaboratively to update the region’s shared transportation vision and investment strategy for the next 25 years.
The updated plan will inform how to invest federal, state and local money through 2040. It includes a draft list of projects representing $15.4 billion of investment in the region’s transportation system, with more than half of that dedicated to throughways, roads and bridges.
An additional $26 billion is included in the plan – $13 billion for transit operations and maintenance, and $13 billion for highway, road and bridge maintenance.
Regional leaders need to make decisions to address the needs of a growing, thriving region. The area is already home to 1.5 million people - by 2040, the region is expected to have 500,000 more people and 350,000 more jobs.
Projects in the Regional Transportation Plan will fill in gaps in walking and bicycling networks.
The transportation system must meet multiple needs for everyone who shares the roads: from aging seniors who want walkable neighborhoods, to a larger workforce that needs reliable transit to get to work, to truck drivers who haul the goods of Oregon businesses.
The projects in the RTP will address these current and future needs and create a more robust multimodal transportation network by filling in gaps for biking, walking and transit. The end result will be a network that is more safe, functional and efficient.
The RTP is more than a federally required document listing future transportation projects. It pinpoints the most urgent transportation needs in the region and sets the spending priorities to meet those needs.
It also establishes policies and best practices to guide these priority investments, ensuring that transportation funding also supports the regional 2040 Growth Concept and Climate Smart Strategy goals.
The Metro Council will hold a public hearing on Nov. 8 on the draft RTP and will consider approving the 2018 Regional Transportation Plan in December.
Learn more
Help finalize the 2018 Regional Transportation Plan. There are few ways to learn about what's in the plan:
Review the full chapters, appendices and implementation strategies below.
Use the interactive map and project lists to learn about specific projects in your neighborhood and city.
Learn more at oregonmetro.gov/rtp.