OUTBoard minutes 022013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Approved 4/17/13 • BOCC CTP Public Hearing Comments (Attachment 7) ADDITIONAL ATTACHMENTS FOR REFERENCE: • Composite Countywide Bicycle Map (Prepared by Planning Staff) (Attachment 8) • Proposed Orange County Rural Connectivity Pedestrian Plan (Prepared by CTP Steering Committee Subcommittee) (Attachment 9) OUTBoard Action: To make a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners for consideration at its March 7, 2013 meeting Paul Guthrie noted that the Comprehensive Transportation Plan (CTP) is winding its way through the process and the OUTBoard needs to finish its review of the plan and send comments to the BOCC. He noted that at the BOCC retreat it was indicated that they are quite interested in the OUTBoard's comments. Abigaile Pittman reviewed the CTP background and maps. Ted Triebel asked how the plans move from being essentially a vision without budget and priorities, as it is not fiscally constrained, to eventually being prioritized and budgeted. Matthew Day, TARPO explained that essentially the RPO submits a list of projects to NCDOT that it would like to see funded. Those projects are pulled from the CTP. Then there is a very elaborate scoring process and the RPO gets to assign some points, DOT gets to assign some points, and then how a project scores goes into the decision on what gets funded. Scott Walston, NCDOT explained the difference between the RPO and MPO transportation project planning steps, illustrating with a drawing on the white board for the group. Paul Guthrie noted that it is important to know what is coming into the area from other surrounding RPO and MPO jurisdictions and not knowing what is happening in other places is a limitation. He noted that everyone is at a different stage and /or uses a different format so coordination is difficult, but the planning itself is simpler than what many other more urban jurisdictions are dealing with. He noted that several of the Commissioners sit on boards of other planning jurisdictions and that becomes significant as they need some background from the OUTBoard. Paul Guthrie commented that he thinks the projections for the rural numbers for the Durham — Chapel Hill population is under estimated. He thinks NC 54 will need more improvements all the way to Orange Grove Road than what the CTP calls for. Scott Walston, NCDOT noted that the CTP Plan gets adjusted along the way to account for changes in information. Alex Castro noted that there are very few commuter corridors into Chapel Hill and UNC like NC 54. When you assess the population using NC 54 to commute, it does not all originate within Orange County, but a large percentage is from people coming through from outside the County and using it a link to get to their jobs. He is concerned with how few commuter links there are. He observed that Chapel Hill is difficult to get to and asked how to factor the commuting pattern into the calculations of traffic growth on NC 54. Scott Walston, NCDOT advised that two things were looked at, past traffic trends and also the Triangle Regional Model, which is a travel demand model that replicates the travel patterns that both DCHC and CAMPO use to predict their traffic patterns. Matthew Day, TARPO added that Alamance County has no plans to extend their 4 lanes of NC 54 farther down than it is now.