Surface Transportation Committee (STC) Meeting
Thursday, October 1, 2019 at 9:00 a.m.
NIRPC Lake Michigan Room, 6100 Southport Road, Portage, IN Annotated Agenda
6100 Southport Road
Portage, Indiana 46368
(219) 763-6060
1.0 Call to Order by Chairman and Pledge of Allegiance
2.0 Public Comment (Chair)
3.0 Meeting Minutes of June 4, 2019 Minutes (Chair)
ACTION REQUESTED – Approval
4.0 Public Comments
This is an opportunity for comments from members of the audience. The amount of time available to speak will be limited to 3 minutes. Commenters must indicate their wish to comment on the sign-in sheet.
5.0 Presentation: Living Streets (Mitch Barloga)
NIRPC Staff Updates (Staff)
Designation of Critical Urban Freight Corridors (CUFCs) Update
Congestion Management Process (CMP) Update
Annual Performance Dashboard Update
Connected and Automated Vehicles (CV/AV) Project Update
2018 Household Travel Survey Data Update
7.0 Other Business (Chair)
8.0 Adjournment. The next STC meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 7, 2019 at 9:00 a.m. in the Lake Michigan Room at the NIRPC office.
The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, marital status, familial status, parental status, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program.
NIRPC Lake Michigan Room June 4, 2019
Minutes
Jeff Huet called the meeting to order at 9:05 with the Pledge of Allegiance and self-introductions. In attendance were George Topoll, Union Township Trustee; Dean Button, City of Hammond; Jeff Huet, Town of Schererville; Dennis Cobb, First Group Engineering; and Salvatori DiBernardo, Ciorba.
NIRPC staff present were Scott Weber, Peter Kimball, Kevin Corrigan and Mary Thorne. There was no public comments.
The minutes of the April 2, 2019 meeting were approved on a motion by Dean Button as concurred by Jeff Huet.
The Porter County Highways pavement surface evaluation and rating presentation will be rescheduled to the next meeting.
Scott Weber presented preliminary results from the Household Travel Survey. The survey will help with better understanding of typical travel patterns, explore how demographics and spatial locations affect travel choices, identify high-demand destinations and modes and produce information that can be used to update the NIRPC Travel Demand Model. Mailings were sent to randomly selected households, 1,598 of which provided travel information using smartphone applications, online browsers or phone help desk response options. A $20 incentive check was sent to households which completed at least one full day of travel for all members of the household. An online survey management dashboard was used. Preliminary results were tabulated comparing the HHTS with US Census Bureau data for household demographics, person demographics, and spatial location. Denny Cobb noted that a lot of school year congestion occurs in the morning and afternoon with bus and automobile traffic that may be underreported in the survey due to its older age demographic. The modeling is more regional and in a macroscopic framework. The final report will be presented to the Commission for adoption in June of 2020.
Scott Weber presented an overview of the Congestion Management Process (CMP) Update Plan. Federal Highways defines congestion as the “travel time or delay in excess of that normally incurred under light or free-flow travel conditions.” The CMP must be conducted by a Transportation Management Association which is a Metropolitan Planning Organization conducting planning for an urbanized area with a population of 200,000 or more. The CMP must include performance monitoring and measurement of the network, define objectives and an acceptable level of congestion for the region, establish an ongoing data collection program, identify and implement congestion management strategies and delegate responsibility. The final plan will be presented to the Commission for adoption in May of 2020.
Scott Weber presented on the Unified Planning Work Program tasks related to surface transportation which were defined at internal meetings. A concerted effort will be made to insure that the tasks are drawn from the 306 strategies. The tasks will include the CMP, design and implementation of a Performance-based Planning dashboard which will begin in the fall of 2020; connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and preparation for the infrastructure for them; designation of critical urban and critical freight corridors relative to corridors with one significant nexus in the freight corridor which adds a level of eligibility for funds. Indiana has 97 miles of critical urban freight corridors. Indianapolis documented 40 to 50. We are tasked with identifying the location of these corridors for funding. E- commerce can have an impact on freight corridors in the region and Eman Ibrahim and the Land Use Committee will be examining E-commerce.
There was no other business.
The next Surface Transportation Committee meeting is scheduled for October 1, 2019 at 9 a.m. at NIRPC. On a motion by Dean Button and a second by George Topoll, Jeff Huet adjourned the meeting at 9:55 a.m.