Eagle Pass MPO presents Metropolitan Transportation Plan findings, launches mapped public comment tool
Loading...
Summary
Stanley Consultants and MPO staff summarized July workshops that emphasized strategic growth, multimodal improvements, congestion relief and border-crossing connectivity and described next steps including a needs assessment, project scoring and a GIS-based public comment map that will be locked to prevent respondents editing others' submissions.
Stanley Consultants and Eagle Pass MPO staff on Wednesday summarized public- and stakeholder-workshop feedback for the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, saying participants prioritized strategic growth, improved sidewalks and multimodal connectivity and relief for weekend congestion tied to border crossings.
The stakeholder and public workshops drew 46 and 24 attendees respectively, Tim Juarez, project manager for Stanley Consultants, told the Transportation Policy Board. He said the workshops identified recurring themes — strategic growth and connectivity, a need for sidewalks and improved pedestrian connections, chronic congestion on main corridors and special handling for ports of entry and freight movement — and that the project team will use that input to develop needs and an evaluation system for project prioritization.
"One of the things noted to be an impedance to that was consideration of oversized, overweight trucks and how they can be diverted in order to have a more free flow of the traffic," Juarez said. He described next steps as completing a needs assessment using traffic counts, level-of-service analysis and crash records, then developing scoring and ranking criteria that will feed a regional call for projects.
MPO staff demonstrated a GIS-based public comment tool that lets residents drop pins and classify issues by problem type and travel mode. MPO staff said the map collects optional respondent demographics to help characterize who is commenting and that submitted points will be tallied into a dashboard used for project evaluation.
Transportation Policy Board members requested that the comment tool not allow subsequent users to view or edit prior submissions to avoid influencing responses. Mister Madera, MPO staff, and Tim Juarez confirmed the comment submissions were locked after the technical advisory committee raised concerns about earlier visibility.
The project team emphasized that the scoring and ranked projects will be technical recommendations that the MPO's technical advisory committee and policy board may re-evaluate at the policy level. Juarez said revenue projections will be informed by the 2025 and pending 2026 Unified Transportation Program (UTP) and that a call for projects will follow development of the evaluation criteria.
Workshop materials, the interactive map and periodic updates will remain available online during MTP development. The project manager said public outreach will continue through events and social media as the MPO compiles responses for the needs assessment and project-prioritization steps.
Board members and staff said they will continue outreach and refine the map’s reporting to support transparent project submittals during the upcoming call for projects.
