The Lexington Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has held six listening sessions for the public to review the region’s 2050 Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP). Jessamine county residents were able to provide their input for the plan by attending the two planned sessions that took place in the Jessamine County Library on Saturday, March 23 and Wednesday, April 10.
Involvement from Fayette and Jessamine counties has been vital in helping the MPO determine what needs are to be addressed in the 2050 plan, which guides the development of regional transportation projects and services and how federal highway and public transportation dollars will be used over the next 25 years.
“The World has changed in a significant way since 2020, and how many of us will get from point A to point B in the future will also change. This plan is important to identify the changes our community desires by the year 2050 and public feedback is essential to adequately understanding that,” said MPO director Chris Evilia.
The MPO is a government organization mandated by federal law for all urban areas with a population of 50,000 or more to conduct transportation planning activities. The Lexington area has a population of over 380,000 and transportation crosses multiple county lines.
The MPO has a decision-making body, the Transportation Policy Committee (TPC), made up of local elected officials and transportation professionals. The TPC approves a regional transportation plan, the MTP, which describes transportation improvements in the Lexington area which includes those in Fayette County, Jessamine County, Lexington, Nicholasville and Wilmore.
Improvements can include land use, trail studies, construction projects and policy changes. The MTP’s foundational purpose is to invest in a more sustainable transportation system that provides safe travel choices to everyone in the region.
These goals were created in part by asking for public input. The MPO conducted a survey during August and September of 2023, both online and in-person, that included the participation of 1,500 people. The results formed the basis of the organization’s goals for their 2050 plan.
The survey asked participants how well they believed the transportation system is doing in addressing various transportation issues today. When asked if enough options were provided for traveling without a car an overwhelming percentage, 81 percent, said the transportation system addresses the issue “not that well” or “not that well at all.”
When participants were asked what top three transportation improvements they would pick to spend $10 million dollars on, most chose “build 35 miles of buffered bike lanes,” with “build 15 miles of sidewalk” and “construct five innovative intersection designs” coming second and third, respectively.
According to the public, the top five specific solutions to improve transportation were to add more sidewalks, improve safety at crosswalks and intersections, add multi-use trails, continue maintenance and repairs and design, build and maintain complete streets. Further, respondents showed a desire to have more balanced options when it came to daily travel with the opportunity to drive (28 percent), walk (25 percent), and ride a bike (20 percent) all equally desired.
Keeping this feedback in mind, the MTP created six transportation goals for 2050. These goals included a focus on safety, access and equity, resilience, quality of life, economic development, and sustainability. Within these goals were objectives such as eliminating serious injuries and fatalities on roadways by 2050, increasing access to quality transit and achieving net zero carbon emissions from the transportation sector by 2050.
In addition to improving transportation, there is a list of projects that include the legacy trail, a multi-use trail stretching from Georgetown to Wilmore. While much of the trail is completed in Fayette County, there are parts of the trail in Jessamine County that need to be connected.
The MPO Transportation Policy Committee is scheduled to adopt the MTP on April 24, 2024, after including the public’s feedback from the six sessions. “After this plan is completed and we have this larger group of projects adopted, we have something called the transportation improvement program, or TIP,” said Lexington Area MPO Senior Planner Scott Thompson.
TIP will implement the 2050 plan, and the process of choosing the projects for TIP will be finalized in August or September of 2024.