ARTS 2050 Metropolitan Transportation Plan

Purpose of Project

The 2050 Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP), or Future Mobility 2050, is the official multimodal transportation plan developed and adopted through the metropolitan transportation planning process for the Augusta Regional Transportation Study (ARTS) planning area. This MPO area covers Richmond and Columbia Counties in Georgia; and Aiken and Edgefield Counties in South Carolina. The MTP recommends projects to improve, maintain, and operate roadways and bridges, public transit, aviation, freight, multi-use trails, and sidewalks. 

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The region is estimated to receive over $3.1 billion in federal, state and local funds for transportation infrastructure over the next 30 years. The recommended transportation improvements include highways/roads, traffic safety and maintenance, traffic signal operations, bridge, freight and railroad, public transit, aviation, emerging technologies in transportation, pedestrian and bike paths. A key outcome of this plan update was identifying or confirming local community visions and priorities, reflecting input from all transportation users through a continuing, cooperative, and comprehensive public engagement process where a total of almost 2,000 people participated in the transportation planning process.

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Our Role on the Project

As part of a team, Modern Mobility Partners (MMP) led or supported several key elements of the plan, including:

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• Developed the socio-economic data for the travel demand model by Traffic Analysis Zone (TAZ) in coordination with Georgia DOT to update and validate the base and future year models
   

• All travel demand model coordination and application with GDOT, including actively working with the DOTs and developing project lists for a series of future scenarios, such as the Existing-Plus-Committed (E+C), Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), long range fiscally unconstrained, and fiscally constrained scenarios
   

• Collection and analysis of Freight Transportation Network Data used to evaluate and prioritize projects. Two metrics were included related to freight: (1) under the Safety & Security goal, projects scored higher if located on the Department of Defense’s Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET); and, (2) under the Economic Vitality goal, projects scored higher if they had higher daily truck volumes. Including these freight-related metrics in the project prioritization process advanced freight-supportive improvements in the project list.
   

• Assembled and summarized relevant local, regional, state, and national Transportation System Management & Operations (TSM&O) initiatives, projects, and studies which were then used to develop and/or incorporate smart mobility policy recommendations into the 2050 MTP
   

• Developed the plan’s performance-based project prioritization framework that met both Georgia DOT’s and South Carolina DOT’s project ranking requirements. The prioritization process reflects best practices for prioritization and incorporates goals, objectives, and performance measures, such as project readiness, type of funding required versus available, and economic benefit analysis, among others

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Problem Solvers

Unique challenges of this plan included balancing the goals and priorities of two different states (Georgia and South Carolina) and their respective Departments of Transportation, as well as the jurisdictions within the MPO area. Our solutions of incorporating all entities goals and objectives into the plan and its project prioritization framework effectively addressed these challenges. The plan addresses federally mandated performance measures and targets as well as statewide performance measure targets and transit asset management (TAM) measures and targets for both Georgia and South Carolina. The goals and objectives from the 2040 LRTP were updated for the 2050 MTP Update based on national guidance, statewide frameworks from Georgia and South Carolina, and local vision. Objective were defined to achieve each goal, then performance measures (or measures of effectiveness) were identified to measure individual projects’ ability to work towards achieving the goals and objectives as well as the statewide performance measure targets. A table clearly illustrates the relationships among the national planning factors, GDOT goals, SCDOT goals, ARTS MTP goals (including weights based on community engagement), ARTS MRP objectives and project prioritization criteria, and ARTS MRP project evaluation metrics and their data sources.

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Ultimately, the 2050 ARTs Metropolitan Transportation Plan (Future Mobility 2050) was successfully adopted by the ARTS Policy Committee in September 2020.