ALTERNATIVES ANALYSIS
The Center for Neighborhood Technology
www.cnt.org
August 2003
The chart below offers specific page references and quotes from Regional Transportation Plan and commentary on why that quote is relevant or problematic.
Page Quote
Comment
32
Proposals involving community, environmental and
management and operations strategies were incorporated
to complement a set of "future regional scenarios"
developed from the transportation system proposals.
Developing the future alternatives by packaging proposals that are
offered up is backwards. CATS should have developed
alternatives based on public priorities and ranked the project
proposals for their congruence with preferred alternatives.
39
There is currently a set of transportation improvements for
which there is sufficient progress toward implementation
to include in each alternative future regional scenario.
"Progress toward implementation" is substituted for project
selection based on regional vision or cost/benefit analysis. This
leads to competition between implementers rather than
cooperative planning.
39
There is currently a set of transportation improvements for
which there is sufficient progress toward implementation
to include in each alternative future regional scenario.
Earlier draft said there was "sufficient consensus" or significant
progress. Consensus statement deleted.
42
Shared Path 2030 examined alternative future
transportation scenarios, not so much in order to "pick" an
exclusive approach, but to "learn" by comparing the
resulting evaluation measures.
The public can not discern the specific strategies and programs
within each "alternative." They can not learn the results of the
analysis from this document.
This review will be more easily understood as annotated comments on problem areas in the 2030 RTP.* The 2030 RTP was considered from the point of view of public
comment during 2001 and 2002, particularly the comment found in
Changing Direction: Transportation Choices for 2030.**
Thematic issues that impact this section include:
·
The use of project "readiness" to determine which infrastructure to fund, rather than the benefits of a project or the regional priorities addressed by a project.
·
Failure to conduct meaningful alternatives testing which should result in several alternative "visions" of how we want the region to gros. Also, no information is
available in the document about which strategies from "alternatives" were chosen to form the final plan.
·
Refusal to meaningfully incorporate the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission
(NIPC) Evaluation Measure scores. Use of a "composite" score for projects, without
showing individual scores, is ineffectual and uninformative.
* Available at
http://www.sp2030.com/CommentSite/index.html
.
**Available at
http://www.cnt.org/tsp/trans/ctaqc/cc/theplan.htm
