[MissoulaGov] TPCC report 7-15-08

[Jason Wiener]

I covered for Stacy in Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee
yesterday. It was a very interesting discussion-particularly in light of
the local option motor fuel tax considered in Public Works-so I thought
I would report in. The main item of interest was a discussion of the
ranking criteria for projects in the Long-Range Transportation Plan
(LRTP), which looks at what we are planning to provide as transportation
infrastructure in the Missoula area during the next 20 years. We also
saw a presentation from the Missoula Ravalli Transportation Management
Association and briefly talked about the need for an additional lane at
Grant Creek Road and I-90. The Grant Creek/I-90 item will be coming to
Public Works as soon as there is time for it (probably on July 30th) so
more detail then but the gist of the discussion is that it would be
better for the project to come through the LRTP, the Transportation
Improvement Program (TIP-essentially a four-year list of transportation
projects) and the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO-an
policy/technical-advisory entity that manages federal transportation
expenditures in the Missoula area) process . Given what we heard about
how the LRTP is likely to play out, though, that might not be the most
expedient way to get the intersection built either.

 

There are five documents connected with the LRTP dicusssion: a ranking
criteria discussion, three sets of ranking criteria and a universe of
projects to which the ranking will be applied. All are attached to the
agenda, posted at
ftp://www.co.missoula.mt.us/opgftp/Agendas/TPCC/2008/20080715TPCC.pdf. 

 

Two major elements have been proposed that are departures from the 2004
LRTP: first, project ranking will be done by locals instead of the
consultant this time; second, funding for improvements will be allocated
prior to ranking. I didn't hear any objections to the first item. I was
at the City Council's hearing on the LRTP in 2004 and the consultant
took a beating so I'm not too surprised by that. It does seem a little
like the consultant off-loading the hard work on the community but it's
likely to be contentious either way so it's probably not a bad idea.
Allocating funding prior to ranking did receive quite a bit of comment.

 

The primary implication of compartmentalizing funding before the ranking
gets done is that projects in the road, transit and bike/ped categories
do not compete with one another in the ranking process. Each gets ranked
according to its own criteria and never the twain shall meet. The
secondary implication of compartmentalizing funding is that the a priori
allocation ends up driving what gets built rather than some set of goals
and objectives that bridge the categories. The consultant said it makes
plans like this easier in his experience because it's tough to evaluate
dissimilar projects by the same rubric.

 

This allocation process would yield a table similar to the following
(apologies if the formatting does not carry, see agenda item 6.3 at the
link above if not): 

 

Road 

Transit 

Bike/Ped 

Total 

City of Missoula 

.25 

.26 

.18 

.69 

Study Area outside City 

.14 

.11 

.06 

.31 

Total 

.39 

.37 

.24 

1.0 

 

I'm skeptical of the approach. Whether we draw artificial distinctions
between modes or not, we are dealing with a single pool of funding
(albeit with an alphabet soup of components) and a single transportation
system. It seems artificially simplistic to just look at the pairwise
preferences of survey respondents and then decide the future needs of
the system based on their reactions in a several minute survey. Stepping
back from the survey's project-driven questions and incorporating the
results from the Envision Missoula public process, we ought to be able
to generate ranking criteria on which each type of project can compete.
Clearly, the ranking criteria offered are not sufficient for such a
task, but they might be made so if there were substantial revisions. For
instance, the feasibility of a project-including cost, likelihood of
funding, even political capital needed to enact-could be ranking
categories, ones that attempt to quantify the technical and political
considerations that actually go on in budgeting for government
expenditures. Further, the ranking itself could be adjusted to grant
more leeway to acknowledge the multiple impacts of any project; for
instance, the rankers could assign negative points to a project based on
its inability to do something, i.e. a project to add lanes does nothing
to shift transportation mode or maybe even encourages single-occupancy
vehicle trips therefore it scores negative in that category even though
it does well in some others. In compiling and weighting the categories,
the ranking criteria generate a sense of each elements' relative
importance to the single system. Choosing a diverse set of scorers ought
to smooth out some substantive disagreements like those who disagree
about whether adding capacity actually reduces congestion over the
long-term. A scoring process like this would be more complex than what's
been proposed but also more like a plan than a scheme for parceling out
resources, which is how the compartmentalization strikes me.

 

Those were my thoughts, anyhow. Others disagreed and felt like we should
just move forward with what we have, particularly in light of the
September 30th deadline for approving the LRTP. Both Alex Taft (from the
Mountain Line board) and County Commissioner Larry Evans impressed upon
TPCC the deadline pressure, with Alex providing more of a plug for the
recommended allocation scheme or something like it and Larry asking what
role fiscal constraint played in deriving the preferences that generated
the ranking. His point seemed to be that participants were instructed to
disregard fiscal constraints during Envision Missoula and respondents
were not asked to consider limits on finances during the phone survey.
If people had been forced to cognize the constraints, which are
considerable, their notions of what should get priority might shift,
i.e. if you want more transit and a second way out of Miller Creek but
have to choose, more bus service might be less attractive than a bridge.

 

Jim Carlson from the Health Department put in a plug for a project to
optimize traffic signal timing. Kalispell is doing one of these and
there is five lights involved; it costs $120,000. There are 60 lights in
Missoula, which would seem to make it a very expensive project if
implemented comprehensively. Speaking of expense, it's worth bringing in
the total numbers involved in the plan here. The estimate of what
funding everything listed in the universe of projects (agenda item 6.4
at the link above) would cost is $1.2 billion. The estimates are
sometimes wildly inaccurate ($16 million for a West Side By-pass,
anyone?) but they give an order of magnitude about what we think will be
needed over the horizon of the plan. Not even half of that money is
available.

 

People kept kicking around a $400 million number as what is likely to be
available in federal transportation funding over the life of the plan.
We already have committed to projects costing about $200 million, so you
can see what kind of gap that leaves.

 

The shortage brought out another disagreement with the consultants'
scheme, which came from Public Works director Steve King and MT Dept. of
Transportation district engineer Dwane Kailey. Both mentioned the need
for mitigating unsafe conditions, maintaining the existing system and
mitigating congestion within it. Neither seemed to feel the a priori
allocation scheme allowed enough freedom to prioritize those activities.
People from transportation planner Mike Kress to ASUM transportation
director Nancy Wilson seemed to echo the importance of those priorities,
which are expressed in the ranking criteria but maybe not to an extent
that ensures they are respected. At any rate, I took away that there
might not be much money left if we focus on what we've got already and
to neglect it would be imprudent.

 

A couple of people responded to those King and Kailey's concerns. Steve
Earle from Mountain Line cautioned TPCC that TTAC (the technical
advisory board) was "mired in agency-related interests" rather than
providing the technical assistance the mostly elected officials on the
policy board need. He seemed concerned that those interests were
impacting the recommendations that arrive from the technical group. Phil
Smith from the city bike-ped office pointed out how crash data was
insufficient to measure the absence of safety because people perceiving
a lack of safety and therefore avoiding unsafe situations entirely is
not reflected in the statistics. It was another interesting point about
the imprecision of quantitatively representing the actual happenings on
the ground.

 

Dwane Kailey really capped off the meeting with his final comments,
which just made me feel like so much of this work is futile without
major systemic changes to the way Missoula and the nation do business.
Dwane pointed out that the costs in the project list (the $1.2 billion
total) were based on old information, updated as recently as April or
May at best. In that time, we've seen the cost of fuel rise
dramatically. In the bidding and letting of specific projects, crucial
inputs like asphalt binder are going up by something like 66% over what
they were just a couple months earlier. So, even though inflationary
pressure is built in, our cost estimates may be low because inflation is
so out of control on crucial inputs.

 

Then he got to the revenue picture. The current funding bill expires in
2009 and there's a big push from states who contribute more than they
collect in funding to eliminate that situation. That's bad news for the
interior Northwest states because we're among those who get the most for
the least contribution. The status quo would be insufficient already and
it looks like that might be the best we can hope for. What funding we're
expecting to have isn't enough and not even that amount is close to a
sure thing. It was a bit of a crushing piece of news, and it impressed
on me the need for Missoula to make its own way on funding
infrastructure. That's more taxes at the local level, whether gas or
sales or income or something else, and that's sure to make people who
are feeling the pinch feel it worse, although it's tough to figure out
how adding 25 cents in local option gas tax (2 cents/gallon on 12.5
gallons) to a $50 tank will even get noticed by the poor guy buying the
stuff.

 

Thanks for your interest.

J.

 

*******

Jason Wiener, Alderman, Ward One

1238 Jackson St.

Missoula, MT 59802

(406) 542-3232

jwiener at ci.missoula.mt.us

 

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