Linking Transportation and Land use Goals through Scenario Planning

Abstract

The federal transportation legislation Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) provides metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) with a framework for developing and evaluating scenarios for consideration in metropolitan transportation planning. Scenario planning will be an important tool as the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), the MPO for the metropolitan Washington, D.C., region, works to develop a Regional Transportation Priorities Plan. TPB has a long history of scenario planning work. This paper discusses TPB's Financially Constrained Long-Range Transportation Plan (CLRP) Aspirations Scenario Study, completed in October 2011, which combines for the first time significant changes in land use with an extensive network of variably priced lanes (VPLs) and high-quality bus rapid transit (BRT) service into an integrated scenario. Two variations of this scenario were developed as sensitivity tests to (a) analyze the effect of land use changes without the VPL and BRT components and (b) analyze a variation of the scenario that included a lower-cost, streamlined VPL network that would require less new construction and more conversion of general-purpose lanes to VPLs. This paper describes the development and results of the analysis of the three scenarios in relation to baseline forecasts for land use and transportation. In addition, this paper compares the CLRP Aspirations Scenario Study with the recommendations outlined in the MAP-21 legislation for scenario development and analysis to evaluate how well the current TPB scenario planning process aligns with the new legislation and how the process can be improved in the future.