Lead Presenter Biography

Adam Argo is a Principal Planner in the Oregon Department of Transportation's Transportation Planning Unit. He leads the development, refinement, and implementation of statewide multi-modal transportation plans, policies, and strategies. Adam is currently managing the Oregon DOT's update to the Oregon Transportation Plan . HIs recent work has also included leading the Oregon DOT's analysis of key trends in emerging transportation technologies such as Connected/Automated/Electric Vehicles and their implications on statewide policies and programs in Oregon. Adam has over 20 years of transportation and land use planning experience in both the public and private sectors. He is a certified planner through the American Planning Association and holds a B.A. in Political Science and M.U.P. in Urban Planning, both from the University of Kansas.

Co-Authors

Presentation Description

The new Oregon Transportation Plan (OTP) is an outcome-driven plan guiding policies and investment priorities for the state’s entire transportation system looking out to the next 20-25 years and shaping Oregon’s transportation through the year 2050. The OTP was developed to be resilient, keying on goals and objectives that put emphasis on equity, safety, sustainability, economic and community vitality and multimodal travel options for Oregonians. The goals are informed from key drivers of change that are influencing, and will continue to influence, Oregon’s statewide transportation system in the coming years.
The Oregon Transportation Plan (OTP) is breaking new ground by employing the most sophisticated scenario planning modeling and approach to explore how prioritize prioritization of statewide transportation system investments in an uncertain future. The forward-looking OTP has used an integrated team consisting of state agency staff and consultants to develop a suite of tools that include VisionEval (www.visioneval.org) and Travel Model Improvement Program Exploratory Modeling and Analysis Tool (TMIP-EMAT) to evaluate thousands of possible futures using a financially bounded model. The integration of these tools to quantitatively conduct exploratory scenario planning for a statewide plan is novel and will provide invaluable benefits to develop the plan but also for other agencies and practitioners.
The modeling and analysis of the OTP is being communicated through multiple channels and oriented around answering key questions:
• How best are modeled investment choices tied to the budget constraints?
• How are travel behaviors and investments affected by the amount of funding on operations, maintenance, preservation, and adaptation to a changing world?
• What investments should be prioritized to meet the goals of the plan? How do those investments change given changes in OTP priorities? What investments should be avoided to mitigate against undesirable futures? What policies and investments should be made to achieve favorable outcomes?
• How do exogenous factors (such as new and emerging technologies, greater teleworking rates, population and employment patterns, climate and energy shocks) impact the dimensions of operating the transportation system in relation to Oregon’s sphere of influence?

New communication tools have been developed to share how future investments affect Oregonians – using a concept of “Transportation Personas” as well as having tools to estimate how individual households experience the transportation futures within the plan. Having a spatial lens enables the plan to communicate how various geographies, and therefore people within those areas, may be affected by the OTP. The statewide equity index developed by the Oregon Department of Transportation is used to compare how outcomes may be experienced by persons facing existing and systemic burdens and transportation disadvantages.

The proposed content is sufficient for a session with multiple speakers and topic areas. These might cover angles such as: intra agency coordination and partnership with external parties such as policy committees as well as consultants, modeling approach and methodology to embedded in the plan, and a detailed analysis of the tools used. 

Presentation File