October 4 through October 8, 2021, members of Eastgate will be attending the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO) 2021 Annual Conference. Transportation Planner Justin Mondok and GIS Systems Planner Jeffrey Gollner will be presenting on a mapping project at the conference.
A Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is the policy board of an organization created and designated to carry out the metropolitan transportation planning process. MPOs are required to represent localities in all urbanized areas (UZAs) with populations over 50,000, as determined by the U.S. Census.
Each MPO develops a long-range regional transportation plan to guide transportation decision making and activities. The MPO also develops a short-range program of projects, the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), which utilizes federal transportation funds.
Many MPOs, like Eastgate, also operate as part of a Council of Governments, working to bring communities together to create a unified voice in areas such as transportation, water and air quality, land use planning, and local infrastructure projects.
An MPO’s authority stems from the federal level of government, while a COG’s authority comes from local government.
MPOs are also primarily focused on transportation in a metropolitan region, whereas COGs have a much wider scope of responsibilities, including air quality planning, water quality planning, regional energy planning and more.
Eastgate is the Council of Governments for Mahoning, Trumbull and Ashtabula Counties, and the MPO for Mahoning and Trumbull Counties.
The mapping project Jeff and Justin will be presenting comes from data collected in service of Eastgate’s MPO duties, developed as a new instrument to demonstrate how regional economic goals can be accomplished through smart data sharing.
Data collected for the map includes traffic counts, past and future projects, wastewater and drinking water, and more. The map is planned as a living document, adding to it as needed or as the communities using the resource request.
The goal of the map is to support the region’s economic objectives by combining and analyzing data from land use planning, economic development, and infrastructure in the greater Ashtabula, Trumbull, and Mahoning County region.
The AMPO Annual Conference gives MPOs the chance to connect and learn from one another, and Eastgate is excited not only to share its work, but to learn from many of the organizations that also seek to improve their communities.