Plano to hold public hearing on 2025 comprehensive-plan maintenance; staff outlines transportation updates

The Planning and Zoning Commission voted 7-0 to call a public hearing on amendments to the built environment pillar of the 2025 comprehensive plan, including future land use, the thoroughfare plan, parks master plan, and the bicycle transportation plan.

Maryam Zahir, senior planner in the Planning Department, said the maintenance review follows Redevelopment and Growth Management policy action 7 (RGM 7), which directs staff to review the comprehensive plan every two years; the maintenance process is intended for minor updates, factual corrections and map alignments rather than major policy changes.

Jason April, senior mobility planner, and Chad Ochinger, senior traffic engineer in the Engineering Department, presented recommended edits to the transportation component and described ongoing implementation work that informed the updates. Ochinger said the city is conducting what he called a broad upgrade of traffic technology and operations. “Plano is currently going through the largest traffic system overhaul that we know of, at least in the state, possibly in the country,” he said, describing a rollout of new signal cabinets and controllers (about 70% complete), expanded vehicle detection and pan-tilt-zoom cameras, and a modernized emergency-vehicle preemption system.

Ochinger gave implementation figures: 59 intersections have been rebuilt with additional left-turn storage, 24 are under design, nine are under construction and about 68 remain to be completed; the engineering group has secured a roughly $5.2 million federal grant for diamond-intersection upgrades and plans pedestrian and bicycle improvements as part of that work. He said upgrades have included nine new signals in the past year and expanded traffic-management capabilities tied to an in-house Traffic Management Center.

Staff also proposed edits to policy text and action language across bicycle, pedestrian, public transit and transportation-demand-management policies to reflect completed work and current coordination with DART and other departments. On transit, staff noted coordination with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Silver Line commuter-rail project and flagged ongoing outreach with paratransit stakeholders; commissioners asked staff to follow up on possible ripples between DART paratransit changes and city policy.

Commissioners asked about several implementation details: whether police would have ongoing camera-monitoring access (staff said PD will have visibility into cameras for incident response but details of PD monitoring policy were outside the engineering presentation), whether roundabouts remain an option (staff said many Plano arterials lack the right-of-way for multi-lane roundabouts and some proposals faced developer opposition), and how bicycle-crash data is collected (staff said crash records come from police reports). Commissioner Bender and others praised the investments in analytics and signal modernization.

Staff said draft recommendations and maps will be published for public review before the formal public hearing later this summer; the commission provided feedback and requested targeted follow-up on paratransit coordination and communications strategy for safety campaigns.