Planning for the Future of Transportation

When you think about the future of transportation — specifically how you might be travelling 30 years from now — what comes to mind? If you're a child of the 60s or 80s, you might envision the Jetsons zipping around in a flying car. You aren't alone.

Four years ago we asked children how they planned to travel in the future. Flying cars was the most popular answer. But we also got some really insightful feedback about their desire for us to move to cleaner transportation choices, like electric vehicles, and to use technology to improve safety. You can hear their feedback in their own words in the video below.

You might wonder why I'm asking you to think ahead 30 years from now. It seems like a lifetime away. I will be approaching 70 by then and expect my daily travel routine to be very different than it has been in my 30s. Some people may no longer be with us and those who will be among the busiest travelers, today's children, may be too young to answer that question. But Metropolitan Planning Organizations, federally-funded transportation planning agencies like the one that I work for, are required to develop long-range transportation plans every four years in order for their regions to remain eligible for federal funding. These plans must look out at least 20 years from now. (Though we tend to round up, so while our last plan was 2045 and it was adopted four years ago, we're looking out to 2050 rather than 2049.)

These plans serve as a foundation for our Transportation Improvement Program, which details federal funding allocated to various transportation projects and programs over a four-year period. This document is updated every two years as projects and programs are implemented or completed and new items are added. Long-range plans also set planning goals for the region, make policy recommendations and prioritize projects for federal funding. While it's impossible to know exactly how much funding will be available 20 years from now, the plans run modelling scenarios that consider how much funding will be generated through revenue sources like a gas tax and consider whether other forms of revenue might be needed to fund needed transportation improvements.

Here's where you come in. We need your input! While we work with experts who crunch the numbers, consider various factors and develop plans, we want to make sure that our goals and ideas align with the needs and desires of North Jersey residents. So every four years we launch a public outreach campaign that typically includes in-person events in each of our subregions (the two cities and 13 counties that are represented on our Board of Trustees) and we use an online survey to gather additional feedback. This year due to the pandemic, all of our outreach events will be virtual. The first will be on September 30 and there are five more events (including one entirely in Spanish) planned for the first of three rounds of outreach. (You can find the full list on this flyer.) So I'm asking you to get involved. Join me for a public event over the next two weeks or if they don't fit into your schedule, take the online survey. I guarantee you can complete it in less than five minutes. If you want to learn more about our latest long-range plan, which will be adopted next fall, visit njtpa.org/Plan2050.

This blog post is an assignment for the Communication Media Design course at NJIT.