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2035 Regional Transportation Plan
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The public comment period for the Houston-Galveston Area Council's (H-GAC) 2035 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is open from June 2 to July 1, 2007. This plan will have a lasting effect on the quality of life of all the citizens of the Houston region, including the 5 million already here and the 3.5 million expected to arrive over the next thirty years. The intent of this website is to provide an independent source of information and analysis to complement the work that H-GAC is doing to involve the citizens of the region in our transportation planning process. H-GAC has developed a website at the following address that contains the full RTP and a series of appendices as well as a public comment form and other information. The best way to begin understanding the RTP is to read the draft RTP Executive Summary that provides the overview of what H-GAC is doing with this plan and how it will affect our future. There also is an easy to read article in the Spring 2007 VISION newsletter published by H-GAC that provides a brief introduction to their vision for the RTP. These and all of the other documents of the RTP are available as pdf's that you can view with adobe acrobat. Draft RTP Executive Summary pdf VISION Newsletter - Spring 2007 pdf H-GAC has made an interesting mapping tool available online to let anyone explore the projects of the RTP by type of project and location. Although the introduction says that this project viewer contains the 2025 RTP data, H-GAC actually switched it to the proposed 2035 RTP data at the beginning of the public comment period. You can use this tool to see what projects are actually occurring in your area or to separate projects between those that will be built in the next four years (TIP projects) and those that are long term plans. H-GAC's Online RTP Project Viewer Livable Houston Network The Gulf Coast Institute convened a study group in Fall of 2006 to prepare nonprofit environmental and community groups for understanding and commenting on the new RTP. This group continued to meet through the spring and began meeting weekly in May as preliminary drafts of the RTP became available. Some of the documents developed by this study group should be very useful to anyone wanting to understand the RTP and provide their own input. The first of these is a word document containing contact info for the elected officials who will ultimately approve the RTP and other ways to comment on the RTP. Anyone making comments should use H-GAC's online comment form as well. How to Comment on the Regional Transportation Plan At the last meeting of the Livable Houston Network study group, we went through a simple exercise to explore some of the comments that everyone wanted to make on the RTP. This word file contains those comments organized by topic area and should be helpful as examples of the type of comments that one can make and you may want to make some of these comments yourself. These points were the result of a group exercise and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Gulf Coast Institute or other participants in the Livable Houston Network. |
Gulf Coast Institute Content
An opinion editorial piece written by David Crossley appeared in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday, June 17th discussing the 2035 RTP and the choices we face as we bring 3.5 million more people into the Houston region. Last-century strategy won't move Houston forward In the early stages of creation of the RTP, David Crossley wrote some initial comments and those are available as a Word file. These are comments on the first draft of the 2035 RTP and were written in early May. Many of those suggested changes have already been addressed in the current version. We will be publishing further comments on this page as they are developed. How many jobs are within a 10 minute drive, walk, bike ride, or transit ride from your house? Jay Blazek Crossley has written a comment on how we measure access and mobility in the Houston region and how this affects our transportation planning. How many jobs are in your opportunity zone? We have a blog dealing with transportation infrastructure issues for the region that contains our discussion of the RTP. You can check the blog itself, sign up to receive updates via email, or use the rss feed to stay on top of any further content we produce during the public comment period. During development of the 2025 RTP, the Gulf Coast Institute published a series of Houston Transportation Bulletins to help the public understand the RTP and how it would affect their lives. Those are still posted on our website. Houston Transportation Bulletin Community Discussion The Citizens' Transportation Coalition maintains a community forum for discussion of transportation issues. We initiated such a forum specifically for discussion of the 2035 RTP, but it was not heavily used, so it has been deleted. Citizens' Transportation Coalition Forums We also were intrigued to find that no one has set up a page on Wikipedia about Regional Transportation Plans in general or about our plan. So we went ahead and started these two pages. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and allows for a people driven knowledge base. Our intent is that others will contribute to these two pages. We just wanted to get it started. Links Citizens' Transportation Coalition Greater Houston Partnership Transportation/ Infrastructure Issues Intermodality: Christof Spieler's blog entry about Great Streets Houston Architecture Info Forum RTP thread Houston Strategies: Tory Gattis' blog entry on the 2035 RTP The Baytown Sun: 'Livable center' could spark downtown area CLEAN Houston: Houston 2035: disappearing greenscape , Houston as a Model City: Meeting the challenges of an environmental crisis Pearland Journal: Pearland takes urban design clue from Europe The Courier of Montgomery County: Judge says county may get commuter rail The Katy Sun: H-GAC wants input on 2035 Plan The Citzen Bay Area: Town centers eyed for area Houston Chronicle Articles: H-GAC presents 2035 transportation plan $5.4 billion is earmarked for Fort Bend transit plans Residents give input on 2035 regional transportation plan 'Livable Space' projects designed for urban growth KUHF 88.7FM Stories (audio and text): Regional Transportation Plan Set for Public Scrutiny Houston Growing into a Polycentric City |