Thursday, August 21, 2014

SRTC Honored With Planning Award

Congratulations to our Transportation Planner Ryan and all SRTC staff who put time and effort into our Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP), Horizon 2040, in 2012 and 2013. The plan is being recognized with a 2014 Joint Planning Award!

Each year, the Washington Chapter of the American Planning Association (WA-APA) and the Planning Association of Washington (PAW) recognize outstanding contributions to the field of planning in Washington State with the Joint Awards Program. The program is designed to celebrate exemplary planning efforts and promote superior quality planning in government and the private sector. Because it is a new approach to transportation planning for the Spokane area, SRTC submitted Horizon 2040 for consideration for an award this year and received one for the “Transportation Plans” category.

Horizon 2040 is a long-term, multimodal “blueprint” for transportation aimed at meeting the mobility needs of the area through the year 2040. It is based on projections for growth in population, housing and jobs and takes into consideration every mode of transportation, such as private vehicles, public transit, bicycling, walking, freight movement, rail and air travel. 

What's different about Horizon 2040 from previous local long-range transportation plans is that it is a proactive effort at enhancing the quality of life for the region. By better coordinating projects and more selectively determining how transportation funds will be distributed, as detailed in Horizon 2040, we will have less congestion in our area, better connectivity between transportation modes, a positive impact on economic development and an overall better transportation system in the decades to come.

“This plan is important to the region because it sets goals, based on public input, as to how the transportation system will develop in the next 20-plus years,” says Kevin Wallace, Executive Director at SRTC. “This document will also help us measure our success, as it includes strategies to reach those goals. This is not a document that will just sit on a shelf.”


No comments:


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.