Planning Board approves changes to Regional Transportation Plan

The Madison Area Transportation Planning Board unanimously approved the updates to the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) Update Draft Wednesday night. The scheduled public hearing prior to the vote was closed due to a lack of community presence leading up to the vote.

The RTP is a 25-year plan designed to be an outline for transportation planning and decision making in the future. It identifies and proposes improvement projects, plans for state and federal funding and organizes detailed studies of the current transportation systems to improve transportation. 

According to committee member William Schraefer, the lack of community participants at the meeting was not surprising.

“It’s hard to get people excited about something happening twenty or so years from now.” 

Additionally, the plan’s updates were several months behind schedule as a result of a short staffed Transportation Planning Board the last two years. The Board had originally planned to approve the changes last November.

This delay has prevented funding approval for upcoming transportation projects in the next year.

While Madison citizens were not present at the meeting, they have made their concerns known to the committee. In an e-mail from the Greentree Neighborhood Association Board, residents requested a phrasing change be made in one of the updates to better reflect the needs of the community.

Schraefer took their request into account and reworded a policy to incorporate their concerns. This minor change and the other proposed additions and updates to the 2035 RTP were then approved by the board without further changes or discussion. 

Updates to the plan included changes to sections regarding inter-regional travel, roadways, land use and transportation system coordination, and the expansion of the park-and-ride system.

The next big change in the RTP will occur in 2016 when the plan is extended another five years.

To learn more about the Regional Transportation Plan, visit their website [1].