PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Contact: Lisa Estrela-Pedro at lestrela@srpedd.org for more info.

SRPEDD Announces a 21-day Public Comment Period and Virtual Public Meeting on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, at 4:00 pm to hear comments on the release of the region’s Draft FFY2025 Unified Planning Work Program and Amendment #7 of the FFY2024-2028 TIP that includes funding for SRTA bus stop signage improvements.

May 23, 2024 – The FFY2024-2028 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for Southeastern Massachusetts currently has a surplus of 18 million dollars in federal highway regional target funds that is not being programmed in Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2024 because no major transportation projects have design plans ready in order to be advertised for construction this year. The Southeastern Massachusetts Metropolitan Planning Organization (SMMPO) is proposing to use these funds to advance a transit project that will replace 740 existing Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA) bus stop signs with modern signs that include a decal with the bus route and QR Code specific to each route, informing customers of real time location of buses. The project will provide riders with real time information about bus locations and arrivals that will help them better plan their trips and make more informed commute choices, with the overall goal of improving the reliability and accessibility of taking the bus.

This project was previously programmed for funding in FFY2025 of the FFY2025-2029 TIP but the SMMPO and regional stakeholders are pushing to advance it one year and transfer the region’s surplus of federal highway funds to federal transit funding in order to begin the project sooner. The FFY2024-2028 TIP is being amended to program $400,000 in Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) funds in FFY2024 and an additional $100,000 match in RTA CAP funds in FFY2025.

SRTA serves 10 communities in Southeastern Massachusetts, including Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, Fall River, Freetown, Mattapoisett, New Bedford, Somerset, Swansea,  and Westport. The TIP is the programming document listing all federally funded road and bridge projects in the region and all transit projects for both the Greater Attleboro and Taunton Regional Transit Authority (GATRA) and the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA) over five years. Each year, the SMMPO decides how to allocate about $26 million in federal funding for the region, which supplements state and local transportation infrastructure investments in Southeastern Massachusetts. The SMMPO conducts the federally required metropolitan transportation planning process for 27 Southeastern Massachusetts communities and is one of Massachusetts’ thirteen Metropolitan Planning Organizations.

Additionally, the SMMPO’s draft FFY2025 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) is being released to a 21-day public comment period.

The UPWP is the planning document listing the transportation-related projects, technical assistance, and other activities that SMMPO staff at the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District (SRPEDD) will undertake during the upcoming federal fiscal year to support the goals and actions established in the Regional Transportation Plan, Moving Forward 2050.  Ongoing planning activities include traffic data collection and analysis, pavement management analysis, community technical assistance, transit and active transportation project planning, public engagement, and development of the TIP. New projects outlined in the draft UPWP to be undertaken in the October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 period include:

• phase 2 of the regional evacuation route study which will utilize communities’ emergency evacuation data collected in Phase 1 to develop a regionally coordinated plan that identifies gaps, conflict points, and other needs of the region;
• a healthy food access plan that will collect and map data on grocery stores, bodegas, food pantries, farmers markets, and other food security infrastructure locations to assess gaps in transit and active transportation access to food;
• update of the region’s freight plan;
• energy transition planning to expand public knowledge of electric vehicles and related infrastructure and funding opportunities; and
• a parking lot utilization assessment that will collect and map parking usage rate data to help communities make informed, sustainable, and cost-effective parking policies and land use decisions that reduce underutilized parking spaces, incentivize fruitful land redevelopment, improve transportation access, and contribute to positive environmental impacts.

All of this work helps support the region’s 27 communities toward building a safer, and more equitable, connected, reliable, and resilient transportation system for all mode users.

A virtual public meeting on the proposed amendment and draft UPWP will be held on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, at 4:00 pm. Everyone is welcome to attend, ask questions and offer comments, but attendance is not necessary to offer input or comment. More options to offer comments can be found below. 

The meeting will be conducted through the ZOOM app. This link provides the information to allow participants to connect to the meeting through a computer, smart phone or regular telephone: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/categories/200101697.

The direct link to the public meeting is:                                                         

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89463267976?pwd=WXlHMmVVVGY2NFZwYVdHY3RhSUNmZz09

The draft FFY2025 UPWP and FFY24-28 TIP Amendment #7 will have a 21-day public comment period and will be endorsed at the next SMMPO meeting which is scheduled for June 18th. To read the Draft FFY2025 UPWP, visit SRPEDD’s website www.srpedd.org at the following link: Draft FFY2025 UPWP.

Comments are encouraged and may be offered by a variety of methods including: via e-mail at lestrela@srpedd.org; our website at https://srpedd.org/contact-us/; our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SRPEDD/; or Twitter @SRPEDD_NEWS at https:// https://x.com/SRPEDD_NEWS.

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