• By Steve Morgan
• November 18, 2020

New Efforts to Monitor Progress towards Federal Transportation Goals

The National Capital Region faces significant transportation challenges which impact where people live and work, development patterns, environmental conditions, and quality of life. NCPC has used Transportation Management Plans (TMPs) to facilitate a multimodal transportation system that addresses these challenges and meets the needs of those traveling to federal destinations. New efforts to monitor TMPs will further strengthen the effectiveness of federal policies and support sustainable growth for generations to come.

A TMP is a campus or site-specific plan that sets forth short- and long-term transportation goals for federal facilities and establishes strategies to help meet those goals. NCPC requires that federal agencies complete a TMP for all master plans and projects that have transportation implications. This can include projects that result in an increase in travelers, change in use, or other impacts to mobility. The level of complexity depends on the project scope and potential impacts. However, agencies should ensure that all TMPs provide ongoing guidance over the term of the master plan, especially for reducing single-occupancy vehicle travel and meeting NCPC parking ratio policies.

The availability of parking is perhaps the most important factor that influences how individuals commute to federal workplaces. Given this reality, NCPC has long emphasized the importance of parking ratios that limit or reduce parking and has recently approved an update to the Comprehensive Plan’s Transportation Element on July 9, 2020 that features a higher ratio of employees to parking spots. Parking ratios encourage federal agencies to think creatively about reducing demand for limited spots, while encouraging employees to reduce their commuting footprint on regional resources and use transit and other alternatives to vehicles. Agencies should also consider how teleworking and compressed work schedules can help to reduce parking needs and manage transportation impacts.

To strengthen the effectiveness of these policies, NCPC is launching performance based TMP monitoring, as part of the updated Transportation Element. Under this new program, NCPC will request that agencies submit data on a biennial basis to evaluate progress towards achieving the goals in their TMPs and meeting the Comprehensive Plan parking ratio policies. Starting in November 2020, agencies will complete a brief questionnaire, designed to be simple and relatively easy to complete, and submit it digitally through a new online submission portal. NCPC will engage individually with agencies to discuss participation in this program and continue to develop monitoring tools to understand transportation trends and help agencies meet their goals.


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