What is the CMPO? Every metropolitan area with a population of more than 50,000 persons must have a designated Metropolitan Planning Organization for transportation to qualify for federal highway or transit assistance. Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization is the MPO for the Logan Urbanized area covering Smithfield, Hyde Park, North Logan, Logan, River Heights, Providence, Millville, and portions of Nibley and Cache County. MPO membership is made up of locally elected officials of the cities in Cache County within the urbanized area. Other appointed officials include the Manager of the LTD and CVTD.
The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) relies on the MPO to ensure that highway and transit projects using federal funds are products of a credible planning process and meet local priorities. USDOT will not approve federal funding for urban highway and transit projects unless they are on the MPO's program. Thus, the MPO's role is to develop and maintain the necessary transportation plan for the area to assure that federal funds support these locally developed plans. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) has greatly strengthened this responsibility by placing the MPO in a primary role for the programming of transportation projects to be carried out in any given year. The MPO has also been given the responsibility to involve the public in this process through expanded citizen participation efforts.
Since the MPO is made up of those agencies responsible for carrying out transportation programs in the region, the process puts all units into partnership with one another to carry out the programs. Any agency can, however, carry out its own transportation projects with its own funds independent of the MPO. What does the CMPO do? The MPO carries out three major work activities to meet specific federal requirements. These are:
The development and maintenance of the Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) through a "continuing, comprehensive, and cooperative (3C)" planning process. The annual development of a five-year program for highway and transit improvements. This program is known as the Transportation Improvement Program or TIP. The annual adoption of a comprehensive one-year planning program: the Unified Planning Work Program or UPWP that describes and coordinates the individual transportation planning activities of all agencies in the area. Without these products, the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization would lose its eligibility for federal transportation funds.
The MPO completed its LRTP that was adopted in January 2005. A computerized model was updated that can simulate traffic flows within this area under both existing and proposed future conditions. In this way, existing and future problems are identified, alternate solutions proposed and tested, and specific proposals selected for inclusion in the plan. Equally important, a realistic assessment of financial resources has been made so that the resulting plan reflects the capacity of the area to carry it out. Citizen involvement was an important ingredient in this process.
While the LRTP looks some twenty years into the future, the MPO also develops an annual TIP that identifies those projects that will be carried out in the next five years. This process involves solicitation of projects' requests from those agencies responsible for providing transportation services and facilities, cooperatively ranking them into their merits, and selecting those highest priority projects that will fit into the estimated available funding.
The UPWP is similar to the TIP in that an annual solicitation of ideas is requested that are then ranked and fit into an estimated budget. The difference is that instead of specific transportation projects, the program consists of planning studies that are necessary to carry out the program. While most of the programs are carried out by the MPO's own staff, a portion is assigned to other participating agencies in accordance with their own skills and responsibilities. The UPWP is adopted in August for each new federal fiscal year (October 1 to September 30), while the TIP is adopted in May-June
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