Metropolitan Planning Organizations Report

MPO Report Summary:

The attached MPO report may be of interet to you. The issues assocaited with planning and the specific examples cited about the Northwest Indiana
Regional Planning Commisison are items for further consideration by those concerned about the process used to achieve a final decison on a road or
highway project.

The participation and interaction in the process by the public is essential and more important as the cost and impact of highway construction decisions
reach into communities in ways that impact the lifes of people in both positive and negative aspects.

The MPO survey noted in the attached document suggests that Congress make improvements in the public information provided to include the
following elements:

1) Congress should specify the kinds of information made available in the annual list:
A clear summary explaining the purpose of the list and any technical jargon

Project Name
Geo-coded Location
ID Number (federal, state, and TIP if they differ)
Description
Funding Source and Funding Amount (itemized by source)
Obligation Date/Point in Process of Construction
Visual Component

2) The annual list should be available on-line and in electronic and hard copy format, and it should be publicized through the media and community
forums.

survey of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) conducted in August 2002 finds that nearly five years after the enactment of legislative reforms in national transportation legislation, the majority of MPOs are in violation of federal law.

In 1998, as part of a mammoth transportation bill ; the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) ; Congress established a new reporting requirement for MPOs. In response to concerns that state and local transportation agencies were spending federal resources in an unaccountable manner, and that expenditure data was not readily available to the public, Congress mandated that:
"An annual listing of projects for which Federal funds have been obligated in the preceding year shall be published or otherwise made available by the metropolitan planning organization for public review. The listing shall be consistent with the categories identified in the transportation improvement program."
The survey also found that MPOs are largely out of compliance due to the United States Department of Transportationís failure to issue planning regulations directing MPOs on how they should implement this provision of federal law.

MPO Report Text:

Findings

Out of thirty-five respondents to a survey of MPOs, only 25 publish an annual list of projects (71%). Only 9 of them make it available online (26%). But only four MPOs surveyed public an annual list of projects in a location that does not require significant investigation.

MPOs also graded poorly against a measure of performance that examines the content of these annual lists. On a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 being the highest possible, the average score for all MPOs surveyed was less than 2 (1.9). On average most MPOs publish a list that lacks project-specific financial information, is difficult to access and understand.

Recommendations

The results of this simple study suggest a number of improvements to the annual list and how it is implemented, particularly as Congress nears the reauthorization of TEA-21 in 2003.

Congress should specify the kinds of information made available in the annual list:

A clear summary explaining the purpose of the list and any technical jargon
Project Name
Geo-coded Location
ID Number (federal, state, and TIP if they differ)
Description
Funding Source and Funding Amount (itemized by source)
Obligation Date/Point in Process of Construction
Visual Component

The annual list should be available on-line and in electronic and hard copy format, and it should be publicized through the media and community forums.
States and other implementing agencies should be required to cooperate with MPOs in the development of the annual list.

Section One: Accountability in Transportation Planning and Funding

Background

Community organizations concerned with transportation planning and practice have often been stymied in their efforts to understand the impact of transportation planning on their communities. Despite the enormous flow of money from the federal government to state and local governments to fund surface transportation projects, there is no standardized process for tracking these expenditures and reporting them in an easily accessible format. At the local level, gathering such data can be nearly impossible. This frustrated both community residents and their locally elected officials.

In the mid-1990s a number of community organizations began demanding greater detailed information on how transportation funds are spent in their metropolitan regions. They logically believed that understanding trends in transportation funding would allow them to better understand trends in the location of private investment across communities. They also felt that knowing how funds are being spent in their metropolitan regions would better prepare them to participate substantively in the metropolitan transportation planning process.

These organizations also shared a common memory of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which Congress enacted in the 1970s. HMDA required lending institutions to make available to the public data on mortgage lending practices. Communities were able to use this information to map the location of loans, and were able to use this information to uncover the practice of discriminatory lending ; or redlining ; in the mortgage industry. While tracking transportation expenditures on highways and transit may be a more complex process that tracking the location of loans, community groups observed that the amount of money involved under HMDA dwarfs all investment in surface transportation. Community groups sought an HMDA-like provision in transportation law that would better facilitate the tracking of transportation expenditures.

In May of 1998, Congress enacted the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which authorized more than $200 billion for transportation improvements over the next six years. In addition to the increase in funding for transit, the legislation adds to existing ISTEA regulations by requiring Metropolitan Planning Organizations to publish an Annual Listing of Projects that receive obligated funding each year in addition to their Transportation Improvement Programs (TIP).

Specifically, Sections 1203.7(B) and 3005.6 of TEA-21 state:

"An annual listing of projects for which Federal funds have been obligated in the preceding year shall be published or otherwise made available by the metropolitan planning organization for public review. The listing shall be consistent with the categories identified in the transportation improvement program."

In 2000, the Administration initiated a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) process, which included the annual list and guidelines for its implementation. Transportation activists ; led by the Center for Community Change and the Transportation Equity Network ; outlined a platform asking for the creation of specific guidelines for the publication of the annual list of funds. These proposed guidelines took into account the needs of community based organizations and were intended to give MPOs specific and comprehensive criteria to help them on the road to full public financial disclosure. Despite controversy regarding other items discussed in the NPRM, a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives endorsed the community-led platform on the annual list.

The recommendations included the following elements for the annual list:

* Distribution of federal funds by transportation mode and funding programs across a region
* Criteria that explain why a project was prioritized or not funded
* Sufficient descriptive material to identify the project using GIS
* The amount spent on a project verses the total anticipated cost of the project for the previous year and the total life of the project
* Information about primary agencies and contractors implementing a project

From the communityís standpoint, these regulations would have made the annual listing an effective tool to both increase accountability and to better engage public involvement.

Unfortunately, after an extensive public comment period, the NPRM was never finalized and specific guidelines regarding the annual list never materialized. Without clear guidance, MPOs were forced to interpret the requirements without federal guidance. The US Department of Transportation (DOT) failed to provide any specific implementing guidance with respect to the law.

As a result, over the last five years, MPOs throughout the country have implemented the provision as best they could, and some never implemented the provision at all. As the results of this survey show, the lack of clear guidance for MPOs has created a great deal of inconsistency in list content and organization that has left individuals, community groups, and MPOs without a common language to discuss even the simplest elements of financial transparency.

Section Two: Methodology

The Center for Community Change selected thirty-eight different planning organizations from twenty-nine states. The majority of these locations had been previously surveyed by the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center in "Getting on Track," a national study examining the degree of access community residents have to funding and planning data.

Center staff broke down the survey into two phases. The first examined web sites to determine whether MPOs published their lists in an easily accessible location. Staff sought out annual lists (in either HTML or PDF format) on the web sites of MPOs that had functional web sites. If the annual list was not available on-line as a separate document, Center staff examined other on-line publications, including a search of the web site, to try to locate the list. Finally Center staff sought contact information for staff who would be knowledgeable about the annual list.

In the second phase, Center staff contacted MPOs and conducted interviews by telephone. Staff sought confirmation that the MPO did, or was in the process of developing a list. The interview posed the following questions:

I am interested in the obligation of your federally funded transportation projects for last year; do you have an annual listing of federal funds?
If so, is that information available to the public?
Can I download that list from your website?
Can you e-mail me your list?

Subsequent questions were asked of MPOs when the following questions did not lead to the procurement of an annual list. These included:

Do you know about the annual listing of obligated federally funded projects?
Do you know that you are required to compile such a list?
Are you in the process of compiling such a list?

After collecting all available lists, the staff evaluated each of the MPOs on a scale of zero to five (five being the highest) based on a set of criteria measuring the availability of the survey, its accessibility, and its content.

An MPO that had no annual list received a score of zero.
An MPO that was able to distribute data given to them by their state DOT but had not created its own annual list in a format that could be correlated to its TIP received a score of one.
An MPO that compiles an incomplete list (missing funding levels and/or sources) or is unable to distribute its list to the public received a score of two.
An MPO that publishes a list that includes project names and funding amounts but lacks important elements such as an explanation of the list, received a score of three. Most of these MPOs do not post their lists on the Internet.
An MPO that has a nearly complete list that is available online but lacks an illustrative element and a strategy for distributing the list in the community received a score of four.
An MPO with a comprehensive annual list with a visual element, easy to understand language and a public outreach strategy received a five.

Section Three: Findings

Web Survey Results:

The Internet has become a critical point of access for community residents to basic information about their public institutions. Although some populations still lack regular access to the Internet, most community residents have access through local schools, community centers, and libraries.

The survey found that only nine of thirty-eight MPOs have an annual list that is available on the Internet. Of these nine, only four were easy to locate. The remaining five published the annual list on line as an appendix to the Transportation Improvement Program.

By not posting their annual list on the Internet, MPOs place community residents at a disadvantage. Citizens are unlikely to be able to access basic information about how federal transportation funds are spent in their communities without extensive research.

Phone Survey Results:

The survey found that twenty-five out of the thirty-five MPOs successfully contacted had some sort of annual listing available to distribute on request. Seventy-one percent of MPOs surveyed are in compliance with federal law.

The quality of the lists produced varied enormously. Based on the criteria described in the prior section, the 35 interviewed MPOs fell into the following distribution:

Ten received a score of 0
Two received a score of 1
Eight received a score of 2
Thirteen received a score of 3
One received a score of 4
One received a score of 5

The majority of MPOs (20) surveyed received a score of less than three. Only one MPO had incorporated a visual element or map into the annual list. Only two actively publicized the list, one through a public meeting and the other in the form of a press release. Of the twelve that received the middle score of three, only six made their annual lists available in PDF or HTML format on the Internet.

In evaluating the annual listings, inconsistencies emerged among the different MPOs. As a case in point, each of the twenty-five MPOs that created a list chose a different title for their publication. Without a standard vocabulary, it becomes more likely that a community member will overlook the document online or that a staff person will not immediately equate an individualís request with the appropriate publication. For example, only twelve MPOs used the phrase "obligation" in the title of their annual listings despite the use of that term in the federal language requiring the list.
MPO Compliance with Federal Requirements: A Closer Look

Unfortunately, most of the MPOs surveyed fell below expectations. But the scores do little to explain why so few MPOs published comprehensive listings, or made a concerted effort to ensure their availability to the public.

Follow-up conversations with surveyed MPOs uncovered the following reasons MPOs gave for not currently publishing a list or working towards that aim. These comments do not necessarily pertain to all MPOs. They illustrate the range of reasons why MPOs are not pursuing or have not been successful in compiling an annual list.

Data from the state DOT and FHWA are set up in conflicting databases making it confusing and time consuming to compile data for the annual list. (6 Responses)
Unaware that the annual list was a federal requirement (5 Responses)
Currently working on compiling a list (3 Responses)
Believed that the state DOT is responsible for compiling and distributing this data (2 Responses)
Not tracking the information (2 Responses)
Not having time to work on the list (2 Responses)
Assuming that it is an individualís responsibility to examine and compare past TIPs on their own to figure out what projects were obligated. (1 Response)
Not being able to access data from the state DOT and from FHWA (1 Response)
The state DOT wonít share information (1 Response)
Not having the data to publish anything more specific than a regional review (1 Response)

In summary, it is apparent that many MPOs are unaware of the federal requirement for an annual list of projects, and that more still lack access to the data necessary to compile such a list. It is particularly important that in several instances, MPOs lacked the data to compile the annual list because of incompatibility of State data or because States did not make this information available.

Though MPOs faced several barriers in compiling their annual list, that most MPOs either lack annual lists of provide incomplete lists create problems for community residents. These barriers to effective public involvement include:

Most annual lists arenít on-line
Most lists do not include an explanation of planning codes or specific project details
Only one of the lists had visuals (i.e. pictures of sites or maps of sites) that illustrated where funded projects were located
Few MPOs call their annual list the same thing ; names ranged from "Work Authorization" to "Year-End Report" to "Annual Element" to "TIP Performance Report."
Few MPOs had support staff who knew about the list or recognized the term used in the federal law "An annual listing of projects for which Federal funds have been obligated in the preceding year." As a result, community residents are likely to be frustrated in their efforts to find his data.

The vast majority of these concerns could be addressed with clear, standardized, and reasonable expectations ; preferably directed through federal legislation ; placed on MPOs and their partners

MPO Compliance: A Closer Look

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has had enormous difficulties acquiring data from the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans). Currently CalTrans runs independent databases for each type of funding source. SCAG is still in the process of compiling a list. The process has required considerable time (to date, they have been working for three years) because SCAG has had to pull data from individual counties in the Southern California region and obligated funding lists for Congestion Management and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) and Surface Transportation Projects. Then SCAG has had to cross-reference the information with its previous TIP publications. Considering that SCAG has over 2000 projects in its current TIP, the compilation of an annual listing has been a project of enormous magnitude.

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) and the Washington Area Council of Governments (WashCog) first had to compile data from multiple stateís DOTs in order to publish their lists. In the case of WashCog, the MPO had to draw data from the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and the metro area Parks service. The process took them more than a year and a half because each department had different databases and different departments tracking the data. DVRPC, located on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has dealt with similar problems to those faced by WashCog. In addition to addressing incompatible data systems, DVRPC has also struggled with unreliable data. According to DVRPC when FHWA changed their tracking system in 2001, the MPO could not accurately track their projects and as a result chose not to publish a listing in FY2001.

The lack of guidelines has also created problems for MPOs who are working on compiling their lists. For instance, Portland-Metro has been searching for new and meaningful ways to track their projects and to share that information with the public. Unfortunately Portland-Metroís approach did not comply with the law because they only tracked regional projects and did not publish information about all their federally funded projects. Although Portland-Metro is sincere in its efforts to create a meaningful annual listing, this example shows that without clear direction even large and community-minded MPOs have difficulty understanding the requirements set forth in TEA-21.

Section Four: Recommendations for the Future

There are numerous positive recommendations Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation may pursue to ensure improved implementation of the intent of the federal provision creating the annual list.

Address the Need for Greater Cooperation among Agencies

Require States and other agencies to fully cooperate with MPOs in the development of the annual list of projects.

Direct MPOs, State DOTs, and the US DOT to create a common database (or at least a compatible system of data collection) to ease the flow of information among agencies at all levels.

Clarify Elements that Should Be Included in the Annual List

Publication and Outreach

The annual list must be available in electronic format and be posted on the Internet in an easily accessible format and location.

The MPO must also make hard copies of the list available for distribution at their local office and also at all public meetings, libraries, and other public locations.

The MPO should create an outreach campaign to educate residents about the availability and uses of the annual listing.

An example of this is the Tuscaloosa MPO in Alabama, which sends the annual listing out as a press release each year to local papers and government officials.

MPO staff must ensure that staff people who interact with the public know what the annual list is and how to make copies available upon request.

Components of a Comprehensive List

The annual list should include a cover sheet or summary that describes the annual list and how to understand the document. Often the listings include funding codes and technical jargon that may be difficult to read without a key.

The annual list should include the following elements:

Project name ; This should be easy to recognize and the same name given in the TIP.
Project location ; The project location should explain the location of the project in enough detail so that it can easily be located on a map; the project should also be geo-coded.
Project ID number ; The listing should include federal, state and TIP identification numbers if they differ.
Project description ; The project description should clearly explain what the purpose of the project is and what it will look like when it is finished.
Funding source ; All funding sources should be clearly itemized.
Funding amount ; The total amount obligated for each funding source should be itemized and funding totals should also be clear.
Obligation date ; The date each project is obligated should be included.
A visual component ; Every year an updated map should be published with the annual list to illustrate how funds are being allocated geographically.