H-GAC TAC

Meeting notes - May 15, 2009

Steve Hawley, May 15, 09.

Tagged with transportation, transit, recovery plan, hgac, txdot, texas legislature, upwp, local option

H-GAC Technical Advisory Committee
May 15, 2009, 9:30 am

Houston Tomorrow publishes notes from public meetings to help local governments in their mission to provide transparency and to allow a greater pool of Houstonians to participate in important policy discussions. These notes are not official meeting minutes, nor do they record every agenda item.

The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) met on Friday to discuss the 2010-2011 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP), two bills in the state legislature, and the possibility of using stimulus money for roadway maintenance. An H-GAC staffer said that the Senate is expected to keep the existing 5-member appointed Texas Transportation Commission but reduce the term lengths from six years to two, while the local-option gas tax has an uncertain future.

2010-2011 Unified Planning Work Program

The UPWP describes the transportation plans and programs and the transportation-related air quality planning activities that will be conducted during Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011 (between October 1, 2009 and September 30, 2011), regardless of funding sources or agencies conducting these activities.

H-GAC presented TAC members with a draft copy of the UPWP, and a public meeting will be held at H-GAC on Tuesday, June 2 at 5:30 pm in the H-GAC offices. The public comment period began on May 8, when H-GAC posted the draft to its website, and ends on Wednesday, June 10.

TAC is scheduled to vote on the UPWP at its next regular meeting on Wednesday, June 17, and the Transportation Policy Council is expected to follow on Friday, June 26. However, if H-GAC receives a lot of public comments, it will push the votes back by one month. The deadline for submission to state and federal agencies is August 1.

H-GAC staff members briefed the TAC on the many functions covered by the UPWP: Program Administration & Management, Data/Modeling Development and Support, Short-Range Planning, Long-Range Planning, and Special Planning Studies.

Among the new features of the 2010-2011 UPWP are: Bluetooth technology that will measure congestion on arterial roads, not just freeways; a regional freight plan; county-level transit planning; travel demand models that will include bike and pedestrian traffic, as well as potential effects of congestion pricing; and models that will document progress toward ozone conformity and will estimate greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources.

Legislative Update

Allen Richey of H-GAC discussed two high-profile bills: the local-option gas tax bill and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) sunset bill. The sunset bill, he said, is expected in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, and that it will likely be passed by the Senate and go to conference committee soon after that. The House version changed the five-member appointed board to a 15-member elected commission, but he said the Senate is expected to keep the 5-person appointed board and reduce the term lengths from six years to two.

The legislation also would establish a legislative oversight committee and set rules regarding membership in Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) policy and advisory councils such as TAC and the Transportation Policy Council (TPC). The new rules would require 75 percent of all TPC members to be elected officials and would limit the size of policy councils to between five and 19 members; currently the TPC has 27 members, of whom 58 percent are elected. It would also require that only elected officials would be voting members. However, an amendment exempted the H-GAC region and preserved the status quo.

The local-option gas tax would apply to counties in MPOs across the state. However, he said, the legislation’s future is unclear. The bill passed the Senate but was drastically altered in the House, and it has not yet been posted on the legislature’s website.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

In April, the TPC instructed H-GAC to look into whether or not the region could set aside some of its stimulus money for maintenance projects, even though it had already approved a complete list of stimulus projects. Alan Clark of H-GAC said that this would be possible if any of the primary projects fell through, at which point maintenance projects could be substituted. He said that agencies would be limited to repaving streets, because widening streets or adding sidewalks would take too much time because of additional environmental clearances and right-of-way.

Other action

The TAC approved a revision to the Regional Transportation Plan Subcommittee. Originally, the TAC had given two METRO representatives spots on the subcommittee. This was an error, however, as one of the slots was supposed to be filled by a transit agency besides METRO.

Under the corrected arrangement, METRO would have one representative, with the Brazos Transit District as an alternate. The other slot would be filled by the Harris County Community and Economic Development Department, and the alternate would be a representative of the Fort Bend County transit planning services. The TAC approved the changes.

Draft 2010-2011 UPWP (pdf, 1.1 mb)

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