Regional Perspectives
Exploring Regional Transportation Planning Organizations (RTPOs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs)
When we want a comprehensive overview of what’s happening on the ground in every region in the state, when we need insights to changes that are underway, there’s no better resource than Regional Transportation Planning Organizations (RTPOs) and their federally chartered urban counterparts, Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPOs).
Created at the same time as the Growth Management Act (GMA), Washington’s RTPOs have been at the forefront of coordinated transportation and land use decision-making for a quarter century. Many of our MPOs have been at the center of regional collaboration even longer.
RTPOs and MPOs are well positioned to provide useful insights on funding priorities, intergovernmental coordination, program effectiveness, and strategic opportunities. While they vary greatly in size and capacity, these bodies made up of local elected officials and key transportation interests, understand how transportation in their region intersects with land use and economic development goals, and how well the multimodal system of local and state facilities and services works together to support those goals.
Working Together to Make the Most of Our Investments
Consistent with the intent of 2040 and Beyond to put transportation into broader community context, many regions are integrating local, regional, and state transportation considerations into an array of other community objectives.
Increasing housing affordability
Supporting walkable communities & streets
Supporting community safety
Improving air quality
Addressing obesity & public health concerns
Improving access to health care
Attracting infill & economic redevelopment
Reducing stormwater runoff
Encouraging job stability & growth
Reducing school transportation costs
More RTPOs and MPOs are in the vanguard of breaking down silos between transportation considerations and other community objectives. They are our boots on the ground, at the intersection of local, regional, tribal and state policies and objectives. Working together we can target investments where they generate the most benefit.
Working with Available Funding Resources
One responsibility of RTPOs and MPOs is awarding transportation funding to priority regional needs. Revenues available to regional agencies are federal funds passed through WSDOT in a coordinated process. Regions appreciate having revenues to direct towards regional priorities but for many of them, the federal character of available funds introduces complications.
Using Federal Funding
- Use of federal funds entails administrative and reporting requirements that can drive project costs higher than if they were completed using non-federal funds, meaning that fewer regional needs can be met with available resources.
- Many state grants favor projects that don’t include federal revenue in the funding package, making it harder for local agencies to assemble funding for a big project that has some federal dollars on it.
- Outside of major metropolitan areas, regional priorities are often small projects or programmatic needs that aren’t a good fit for federal funding.
Many small and rural agencies are not authorized to use federal funds and must pay WSDOT to administer their federally funded projects if selected in RTPO or MPO processes.
It’s not that regions and their partners don’t want the money – they do – but the federal nature of current revenue makes it costly and complicated to use. Funds spent administering projects aren’t available for delivering projects.
Opportunities exist for a more strategic approach to regional funding mechanisms and alternatives to federalizing so many projects across the state, especially in regions where the use of federal funds creates a burden. It is possible to get more done with available resources if regional funding comes from more than just federal sources.
Coordinated Transportation and Land-Use Decision Making
The success of our statewide transportation goals depends on our ability to integrate transportation and land use considerations. RTPOs and MPOs have insightful, real-world experience with what that entails and why it is easier said than done. They have practical knowledge of the challenges local agencies face in trying to meet what are, at times, competing objectives related to mobility, congestion, land use, housing affordability, equitable access, financial constraint, and other growth management objectives.
Washington's wealth is not distributed evenly across the state. Does transportation policy have a role in shifting the balance of that equation a little bit, to relieve some of the excess demand on one part of the state by encouraging investment in another?
Some regions and communities have the financial might to tip the scales and catalyze an economic opportunity, but most don’t. It’s hard to attract private investors to build in communities where there’s little growth. Regions work with many communities that want to embrace more compact development but can’t afford the sewer or water systems necessary to support higher density, mixed-use transportation-efficient development. RTPOs and MPOs know the dilemma facing smaller urban transit systems where communities desire more direct and frequent bus service but where the land use patterns don’t yet generate the ridership needed to justify that service.
The GMA directed local jurisdictions to manage growth. Counties and cities are where zoning, permitting, and other land use decisions are made. Having land use authority is not the same as directing market-driven development decisions. There is a delicate balance between the regulatory framework of growth management and the economic reality that drives private property development and consumer choices. Local and regional plans control some of the levers that affect that balance, but they do not control all of them. The vast majority of Washington’s 281 cities and towns do not have the economic clout to directly influence the private real estate market in meaningful ways.
Washington’s wealth is not distributed evenly across the state. That is a problem for transportation and the broader statewide goals it is meant to support. In 2018, as communities in central Puget Sound experience one of the hottest real estate markets in the country and grapple with excessive congestion, soaring housing costs, and encroachment on marine terminals; communities elsewhere on the I-5 corridor and throughout Washington are doing everything they can to attract some of that economic opportunity.
Places like the Vancouver metropolitan area, Spokane, Bellingham, Tri-Cities, and the Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater urban area also have ample growth to manage. Coordination between jurisdictions is needed to mitigate spillover impacts from one jurisdiction to another. In many other places though, a bit of peak period traffic congestion and the need to model intersection operations would be welcomed.
Does transportation policy have a role in shifting the balance of that equation a little bit, to relieve some of the excess demand on one part of the state by encouraging investment in another? That raises deep philosophical questions about the role of government in influencing economic outcomes, as it should. In reality, though, we do it all the time with the transportation investments we make or don’t make. How we think about that question and the potential role of transportation investments may inform how we approach concurrency in the future.
