Integrated Planning 

Date and Time: 8/30/2022
Location: Cinnabar

Presenter: Roxanne Bash, Transportation Planning Team Lead, Federal Highway Administration

  

 

 

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recently announced their new Planning Emphasis Areas (PEA), which includes improving coordination between Federal Land Management Agencies (FLMA), State DOTs and local governments; a focus on equity and justice, as well as incorporating a complete streets concept into transportation planning; addressing climate crisis issues; improving public involvement strategies; improving planning and environmental linkages and a few more topics. Some existing FHWA funding programs, such as the Federal Lands Access Program, as well as long range strategic transportation plans created by States, MPOs and FLMAs have long supported taking an integrated planning approach to programming projects and encompass many of the PEAs. Coinciding with the PEAs, the current administration’s new highway infrastructure bill brings additional resources to various agencies to support strategic planning activities that could further put these concepts into action.

This presentation will provide specific examples of how small and medium sized gateway communities to FLMA sites, as well as other local government agencies and State DOTs, have utilized existing programs and processes to identify projects and initiatives of mutual interest to multiple transportation system owners. Programs like the Federal Lands Access Program have provided states with large federal estates much needed resources to address State and local government improvements to systems that access Federal public lands. With this comes coordination and cooperation between State, local government and Federal Land Management Agency representatives. An offshoot of Collaborative Long Range Transportation Plans developed in several Northwestern States has been the creation of Transportation Working inspiration Groups (TWiG) that provide an examples of integrated planning among transportation system owners within a given state that support identification of needs and opportunities that can be replicated in other areas.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Roxanne Bash is the Planning Team Lead with FHWA Western Federal Lands located in Vancouver, WA. Her work focuses on bringing transportation planning expertise to the Federal Land Management Agencies to support strategic decision making process for FLMA managers regarding their transportation systems. Roxanne is a certified Project Management Professional and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Western Washington University and an MBA from the University of Alaska, Southeast.