Phase Three Public Outreach

The third and last phase of LRTP 2045 public involvement is a 30-day review period for the DRAFT LRTP 2045 from Wednesday October 23 to Thursday November 21, 2019. In addition to promoting this website for review, printed copies of the website are available at the following locations:

• Champaign Public Library
• Urbana Free Library
• Illinois Terminal in Champaign
• Savoy Municipal Center
• Tolono Public Library
• Mahomet Administration Building
• Champaign County Regional Planning Commission in Urbana

Input received and updates made to the LRTP 2045 during the public comment period will be documented in this section as they are processed by CUUATS staff. CUUATS staff will also be presenting the DRAFT LRTP 2045 to the following local agencies for review and feedback:

• October 30, 8:00AM - Chamber of Commerce
• October 30, 3:00PM - MTD Board of Trustees
• November 8, 9:00AM - County Board, Highway and Transportation Committee
• November 13, 7:00PM - Savoy Board of Trustees
• November 15, 10:00AM - University of Illinois
• November 18, 7:00PM - Urbana City Council
• November 19, 6:00PM - Mahomet Board of Trustees
• November 19, 7:00PM - Champaign City Council
• November 22, 8:30AM - RPC Board

Public Comments Received

Email received 10/25/2019 regarding Multimodal Connectivity strategies

Regarding Strategy #6:“Identify cost effective ways of including bicycle, pedestrian, and transit accommodations into all new roadway projects.”

Based on our complete streets policy we do not build accommodations for walking, bicycling, and transit just when it is “cost effective”. It is not clear what “cost effective” means or how this is determined. These accommodations are necessary to our transportation system and should be built whenever feasible, not just when it is cost effective. The wording implies that sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure and bus stops are luxuries that will be included only if there is funding leftover.

Sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, and transit facilities save communities and families money. They are the most cost effective investment we make in infrastructure providing a plethora of benefits for much lower costs than infrastructure for single occupancy vehicles. So if we want to build cost effective infrastructure we should start by providing for walking, biking, and transit and include accommodations for cars when it is “cost effective”.

• Updated:
  Strategy #6 was updated to read: “To maximize pedestrian, bicycle, and transit improvement implementation efforts, identify ways of including bicycle, pedestrian, and transit accommodations into all new roadway projects that don’t already consider other modes.”

Email received 10/25/2019 regarding Multimodal Connectivity strategies

“6. Identify cost effective ways of including bicycle, pedestrian, and transit accommodations into all new roadway projects. Responsible Parties: IDOT, Cities, Villages, University of Illinois, Developers, Townships”

If we measure “cost-effectiveness” of transportation infrastructure relative to SOV lanes then, all bike, pedestrian, and transit accommodations are cost effective. Bike lane miles and sidewalk lane miles are drastically cheaper than the same lane miles of car infrastructure and are more efficient for moving people. Transit infrastructure is the same cost as SOV lanes and moves an order of magnitude more people than a similar lane devoted to moving car traffic. Rather than identifying places where bike, pedestrian, or transit infrastructure is cost-effective, the assumption should be that cycling, pedestrian, and transit infrastructure will be accommodated into all roadway projects, and SOV lanes will be built if they make sense. Not the other way around.

• Updated:
  Strategy #6 was updated to read: “To maximize pedestrian, bicycle, and transit improvement implementation efforts, identify ways of including bicycle, pedestrian, and transit accommodations into all new roadway projects that don’t already consider other modes.”

Phone call received 11/14/2019 regarding LRTP 2045 Vision Video

The video references the desired railroad grade separation at Curtis Road as an “overpass,” though it should be referred to a an “underpass” from the perspective of the roadway and drivers, as the road will go under the railroad and the railroad will go over the roadway.

Comments left with printed version of the website at one of the public review locations

My overall comment is that the trends in VMT need to be quantified, particularly in order to track weather it is declining or rising.

Additionally, 30-days is not a sufficient public input period. Please plan for a 60-90 day public input period next time.

It was nice to have access to a printed copy, it really fits together much better that way as one can reference several sections instantly. Overall, it provides a nice vision of what rational and transformative transportation planning and implementation could do for the C-U area in terms of equity, economy, and the environment. Good job!

Regarding Pedestrian Safety

This section seems to attempt to minimize ped casualties. Please fix as suggested: Replace “Local pedestrian crashes, while rare, are about twice as likely to result in death or disability as bicycle crashes” with “Local pedestrian crashes, while rare at about 2% of overall crashes, account for 22% of traffic fatalities and 16% of serious injuries.”

• Update:
  After double-checking the numbers, replaced the sentence referenced above with, “Local pedestrian crashes, while rare at about 2 percent of overall crashes, account for 18 percent of traffic fatalities and 9 percent of serious injuries.”

Regarding Fatal Traffic Crashes

You need to continue the parallel construction from previous paragraph. The fatal crashes per 100 Million VMT have increased significantly from 2012 and are higher than the statewide fatal crash rate.

• Update:
  Added the sentence, “The five-year rolling average of total fatalities per 100 million VMT in the MPA has been relatively stable since 2012, but has increased approximately 11 percent from 0.69 in 2014 to 0.77 in 2016. In 2016, the Champaign-Urbana MPA saw 1.03 fatalities per 100 million VMT, higher than the statewide rate of 1.01.”

Regarding Map of Fatal Crash Location in the MPA, 2013-2017

Unclear map legend

• Updated map legend with more descriptive labels

Regarding Trains

Worsening delays as discussed in the next paragraph likely played a role.

• Update:
  Rearranged and edited section text to make that connection more obvious.

Regarding Multimodal Connectivity Performance Measures

The performance measure of Vehicle Miles Traveled per Household needs to show the current value in order to measure performance.

• Information: The LRTP 2045 Annual Report Card will serve as the data source for measuring performance going forward. The current LRTP 2040 report card has more information regarding Household VMT.

Email received 11/21/2019 regarding the home page

1. I personally appreciate the web plan instead of a lengthy pdf; you can click to a new header/page without doing endless scrolling or searching.
2. The embedded maps you can interact with are gold.
3. Picture at the top of each page makes them more engaging in my opinion.

Suggestion:

1. Web plan layout can be really confusing for some, I wonder if there should be a blurb on the main page about why/how to interact with and flow through the plan?

Request made at presentation 11/22/2019 regarding Future Projects: Local and Unfunded

Add the Boneyard Creek Multiuse Path (connecting downtown Urbana to Campus) to the list of local and unfunded projects as listed in the City of Urbana City Council and Mayor Priorities 2018-2021.

Additional Updates Made After October 23rd, 2019

Residential Land Area Update

A member of the LRTP Steering Committee recognized a mistake in the calculation of residential land area change by residence type. The following text and chart were removed and replaced in the Residential Population Density section.

REMOVED:

The chart below shows changes in residential land area in Champaign, Urbana, and Savoy from 2007 to 2017. This time period was dominated by increases in residential land area designated for multi-family residences, particularly in Champaign and Urbana. Land area designated for single-family residences also increased significantly in Savoy and modestly in Urbana, but decreased slightly in Champaign. Land area designated for mobile homes increased in Urbana but did not change in Champaign or Savoy.

<rpc-chart url=“landuse-residential-change.csv” type=“bar” switch=“false” stacked=“true” y-label=“Percent Change in Residential Land Area” legend-position=“top” legend=“true” tooltip-intersect=“true” source=" Champaign County, Tax Assessor, 2007-2017 Parcel-level Data" description=“Note: Residential land area did not change significantly in Bondville from 2007 to 2017. Tolono and Mahomet did not have sufficient data to calculate land use change between 2007 and 2017.”" chart-title=“Residential Land Area Change by Residence Type, 2007-2017”>

Access Score Updates

The Access Score web application was embedded in the Access Score, 2015 Baseline section of the Modeling page.

ADDED:

Public Involvement Overview Updates

Additional information and tables were added to the Overview page to summarize the public involvement for Phase 1 and Phase 2 combined.

ADDED:

CUUATS staff designed and scheduled the LRTP 2045 public involvement strategies and events to capture a representative sample of the population in the metropolitan planning area, with special emphasis on engaging underrepresented populations. The following charts provide an overview of participant demographics based on voluntary information provided by approximately 60 percent of participants from phase 1 and phase 2 of LRTP 2045 public involvement which included 27 in-person events as well as online engagement, and resulted in over 1,200 transportation system comments and over 1,100 surveys submitted about current transportation behavior and future transportation priorities.

<rpc-table url=“input_allevents.csv” table-title=“Public Outreach Events by Municipality - Phases One and Two” columns=“1,2” rows=“1,2,3,4,5,6,7”

UrbanCanvas - Land Use Modeling Update

Two maps showing UrbanCanvas' projected future growth for the Metropolitan Planning Area were updated to illustrate growth at a smaller geographic scale. Geographic units based on population such as traffic analysis zones (TAZs) and Census blocks are much smaller in dense urban areas and get much larger as population density decreases outside urban areas. This phenomenon can visually exaggerate changes between urban and rural areas. Since the difference in size between urban Census blocks and rural Census blocks is smaller than the difference in size between urban TAZs and rural TAZs, two new growth maps showing projected growth by Census block replaced two maps showing projected growth by TAZ in an attempt to provide a more accurate visual representation of projected growth. Additionally, the definition of “significant growth” highlighted in the maps was changed from greater than 25 percent to 20 percent or more, with a minimum absolute change of 20. The following text and maps were removed and replaced in the UrbanCanvas - Land Use Modeling section.

REMOVED:

The distributions of areas of significant growth can be seen in the following two maps, and were defined as TAZs with more than 25% growth in population or employment between 2015 and 2045.

System Performance Report

The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) enacted in 2012, and the subsequent Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), enacted in 2015, established a national performance measurement system for the highway and transit programs. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) instituted this performance management requirement by establishing performance measures for four categories through rulemakings. Each performance measure’s baseline and targets must be included in a System Performance Report in the MPO’s long-range transportation plan to document the condition and performance of the transportation system with respect to required performance measures.

ADDED:

System Performance Report

Forecasting Revenues, 2020-2045

REPLACED:

The State of Illinois just released their multi-year program on October 21, 2019. Given the program’s impact on local transportation investment, this section will be updated as soon as CUUATS staff are able to process the state’s multi-year program and incorporate the information into the plan.

ADDED:

The entire Forecasting Revenues, 2020-2045 section was updated to reflect current federal and state funding levels as well as local revenue and expenditure projections through 2045.

Public Involvement Overview

An error was found in the calculation of the demographics of the public input participants. The following table was removed and replaced in the Public Involvement Overview.

REMOVED: