The Southern Alleghenies Rural Transportation program involves the creation and maintenance of a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), Twelve-Year Plan, and Long-Range Plan for Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, and Somerset Counties.
The Planning Commissions of Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, and Somerset Counties work together with the Commission to develop a rural transportation planning program that meets national, state, and local goals.
SAP&DC works with the Federal Highway Administration and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to develop a progressive transportation planning program. The Southern Alleghenies Rural Transportation Planning Organization acts as a state-designated Rural Planning Organization (RPO).
Rural Planning Organization (RPO)
On January 6, 2003, SAP&DC entered into an agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to act as a designated RPO for the counties of Bedford, Fulton, Huntingdon, and Somerset. As an RPO, the SAP&DC will:
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Develop an annual Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP)
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Update and maintain a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), Twelve-Year Plan (TYP), and Long Range Transportation Plan
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Perform assigned traffic counts and HPMS data collection
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Establish and maintain a committee to review and approve recommendations on transportation planning and programs
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Conduct and participate in studies of regional transportation issues
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Develop and implement a Congestion Management System (CMS)
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Update the highway functional classification system.
RPO Transportation Related Initiatives
The Southern Alleghenies RPO strives to create new products and methods to aid transportation planning, programs and procedures.
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Local Bridge Criteria
With reduced funding, the region’s ever-growing need to replace or rebuild bridges presents a problem. Funds are no longer available for every local bridge project. The RPO is currently testing a system to rank local bridges. The bridge ranking system assigns scores for factors such as physical structure and economic need. This bridge ranking system will be used only for conflicting requests for TIP placement. After the ranking system has been tested and approved by our committees, the final product will be posted on this section of the web site.
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Electronic Voting Procedures
TIP issues may be time-sensitive and require quick administrative action to ensure that a project has the funding needed for completion. Previously, RPO would mail memorandum votes for TIP changes to committee members. This process would require almost a month to gather and tally the votes and submit the project to the PennDOT Central Office.
The SAP&DC has created “e-memo vote,” which uses electronic mail to distribute a password-protected memorandum vote template. The RPO committees have formally adopted e-memo vote to reduce the time needed to process memorandum votes from a month to a week. The e-memo vote process saves paper, postage and, most importantly, time.