Joint Agency Planning for MetroLink Expansion in St.Louis, Missouri

摘要

Since 1996, the St. Louis region has been conducting all multimodal transportation corridor planning through an interagency planning unit housed at the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council (MPO). We believe this to be a unique approach to transportation planning in the United States, The joint planning group, known as the Transportation Corridor Improvement Group (TCIG), includes staff members from each of three agencies ― the transit authority (Metro), the state transportation department and the MPO. To date, approximately 10 planning studies or major investment studies have been completed by this group, including 4 studies that included consideration of major MetroLink light rail extensions. This paper will summarize the St. Louis experience in carrying out these joint planning studies, particularly those involving corridors in which light rail expansion is an alternative, and will discuss the benefits and issues that have resulted from using this collaborative process over the past 6 years. Many significant benefits have resulted from the joint planning of the MetroLink extensions including better public understanding and acceptance of the process, a more coordinated cooperative planning process, more effective community engagement due to consistency of people and messages, and more efficient use of limited planning staff, consultants, and other resources with minimal duplication of effort. However, there are some pitfalls that we are working to resolve in current and future studies. The most notable of these involves the need to ensure the complete buy-in of staff outside the TCIG within the three agencies during the planning process so as to facilitate the smooth transfer of the resulting projects to the implementing agency.