## Ithaca-Tompkins Case Study

+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **1990 Census Population** | 50,133                                  |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Central City**           | Ithaca, New York                        |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Air Quality Status       | attainment                              |
| (1990)**                   |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Governor Designation     | June 11, 1992 (MOU signed by NYSDOT)    |
| Date**                     |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Voting Policy Board      | Tompkins County                         |
| Members**                  |                                         |
|                            | City of Ithaca                          |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | Town of Ithaca                          |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | Village of Lansing                      |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | Village of Cayuga Heights               |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | New York State DOT                      |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|                            |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|                            |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|                            |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Non Voting Policy Board  | TCAT                                    |
| Members**                  |                                         |
|                            | Cornell                                 |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | FHWA                                    |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | FTA                                     |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | All local governments                   |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| ### PL and 5303 Fun        | \$147,243 (not including in-kind state  |
| ding (Year of Designation) | and local funds)                        |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Initial Staff Size**     | 1                                       |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Initial Staff Location** | Tompkins County                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Modeling                 | MPO                                     |
| Responsibility**           |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **GIS Responsibility**     | MPO and County                          |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **AQ Conformity            | N/A                                     |
| Responsibility**           |                                         |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Contacts**               | Fernando de Aragon, MPO Director        |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | \(607\) 274-5570                        |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | Dwight Mengel, TCAT                     |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | \(607\) 277-9388                        |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | David Boyd, former MPO Director         |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | Janice Gross, NYS DOT Region 3          |
|                            |                                         |
|                            | \(315\) 428-4409                        |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| **Website**                | www.co.tompkins.ny.us/itctc/            |
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| ![](media/                 |                                         |
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| heig                       |                                         |
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# 

# The Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council (ITCTC) in New York was formed and 1992 and has oversight on regional transportation planning matters. In addition to staff, it consists of a policy committee and a transportation planning committee. The policy committee or board is the MPO's final decision-making body, while the transportation planning committee is charged with coordinating the area's transportation planning work and providing technical advice to the board. The policy board originally had six voting members and one non-voting member (Cornell University), but in the last ten years two changes were made to its composition. The Town of Dryden was added at the town supervisor's request, although only a portion of Dryden lies within the urbanized area boundary. When Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) inherited the systems of three pre-existing transit providers, it was added as a non-voting member of the policy board. The planning area boundary for ITCTC is the same as the Tompkins County boundary, although the urbanized area covers only a portion of the county.

# 

# Steps to Designation

The Ithaca area's urbanized population barely surpassed the
50,000-person threshold for designation as an urbanized area as a result
of the 1990 Census. Local and state officials had not expected the
designation when it was announced in September 1991. County planning
officials spent the next two months researching the responsibilities of
an MPO and the different models that existed within the state. In
November, Tompkins County formally expressed the interest of the county
and the urbanized area's municipalities to form an MPO. County officials
also met with NYSDOT's Transit Division and Urban Planning Division
Staff to discuss the possibility of the county hosting the MPO.

NYSDOT initially recommended that the MPO be hosted by the state rather
than by the county. After discussions with the state's other MPO
directors, the county became more convinced of the merits of a locally
hosted MPO. In an effort to build consensus around the locally hosted
model, Tompkins County drafted "A Plan for Establishing the Ithaca MPO"
and distributed it to the area's municipalities and Cornell University
in January 1992. The Plan outlined a possible hosting arrangement
including the MPO's use of office space and sources of budget revenue.
In March 1992, after local officials had agreed to support the locally
hosted MPO, Tompkins County forwarded a letter to NYSDOT expressing
their desire to host the MPO. At this point, the state officially
announced its preference for a state-hosted MPO. The NYSDOT proposal
featured a state employee based out of Cornell University. In late
March, a meeting was held in Ithaca at which Tompkins County and local
officials and staffs heard presentations from both NYSDOT officials and
two New York state MPO directors on the different options for hosting.
The support for the county-hosted MPO by local officials was reaffirmed
after this meeting and the state acceded to their wishes.

In the state of New York, NYSDOT acts on the behalf of the Governor for
matters relating to MPOs. Since the NYSDOT had been involved in the
process of forming the MPO, it was not necessary to send a formal
package of documentation to support designation of the MPO. Instead,
ITCTC was designated when NYSDOT, Tompkins County, and the four
municipalities signed the Memorandum of Understanding on June 11, 1992.
The process of forming the MPO after the initial expression of interest
by the county had taken roughly seven months.

# ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

# Policy Board Membership

One significant issue during formation, in addition to the hosting of
the MPO, was the composition of the policy board. NYSDOT had designated
an Interim Policy Committee consisting of NYSDOT, the City of Ithaca and
Tompkins County. An MPO official said that with smaller MPOs it is not
too difficult to decide who should be on the board, and the Town of
Ithaca, and the villages of Lansing and Cayuga Heights were included by
mutual agreement of the interim committee. The decision to keep the
number of policy board members at the six mentioned above was made after
discussions with other New York MPOs. Many directors across the state
had encouraged ITCTC to keep the number of seats at the policy board
table small. They cited the need to balance adequate citizen
representation with the fact that you still need to make decisions. One
MPO official believed that government and business groups alone cannot
solve problems alone and that non-profits and citizens groups' input
were needed. However, he suggested that this input be brought in at the
transportation planning committee level rather than on the policy board.

Cornell University, an institution with considerable impact on the
region economically, intellectually, and in the area of transportation
as a key provider of public transportation, was left off of the policy
board. The university is an active member of the transportation planning
committee. ITCTC policy members agree that the needs and interests of
Cornell have been very closely considered. Still, both Tompkins County
and MPO staff involved at the outset agree that, as the dominant
non-governmental organization and a large partner in the transit system,
Cornell should have been included on the policy board. As for the
transit system, no representative was named to the policy board
initially as there were multiple transit providers (Ithaca, the county,
and Cornell) in the region, and all were represented on either the
transportation planning or policy committees.

The ITCTC policy board's decision-making is guided by a consensus system
whereby all "affected parties" (defined as the City of Ithaca, Town of
Ithaca, NYSDOT, and Tompkins County) had to agree on policy board
decisions. According to county staff, the system has worked very well in
Ithaca due to a political culture where people try to be responsible and
see it as being in the collective interest to reach agreement. Although
the consensus system effectively gave each policy board member a veto,
it was in the interest of members not to use it frivolously. The state
was reluctant to use its "veto" since they had an interest in moving
products like the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) along. As a
result, local officials were successful in negotiating to get some
additional projects approved that were not state priorities. Local
officials also hesitated to use their potential veto power as there was
concern that NYSDOT would move some of its spending outside of Tompkins
County. In addition to the consensus system, another strong point of the
policy board was that an early chair of the policy committee was the
chief elected official of Tompkins County. Having the chief elected
official of the hosting agency as the policy board chair was viewed as
important, since it can be difficult to get the host agency to
understand the nuances of MPOs otherwise.

# Funding and Staffing

County and MPO staff view all members of the MPO as being supportive of
the process. Whenever there has been a need to conduct a study, there
has been a strong tradition of interested parties "putting up the cash."
In the first couple of years, ITCTC produced a regional trails plan,
which became instrumental in their subsequent success at securing
enhancement funds.

The first person hired to the MPO staff was the Director. He was hired
during the first year and his initial focus was on investing in GIS
capabilities. Tompkins County and the MPO Director worked together to
simultaneously enhance their respective capacities to do mapping work.
For highway-side travel demand modeling, they contracted for assistance
with Cornell, although in recent years the MPO has done this work
itself. Until recently, the MPO staff had grown to four (director,
administrative assistant, planning analyst with TIP and GIS
responsibilities, and a modeler). Currently the staff has been reduced
to three full-time employees and one part-time employee whose
responsibility includes modeling and other data needs. Some GIS work is
contracted out to the county.

# Transit's Role

The nature of the region's transit service at the time of formation
resulted in the initial absence of a transit-specific member on the
policy board. According to the planner of the County's transit system at
the time, this did not lead to an absence of a strong transit role in
the MPO's planning process. The Ithaca area has a strong transit
culture, evidenced by its identification by FTA as a "small transit
intensive city" in a 2000 report to Congress. The report identified
small urbanized areas with ridership, route mileage, fleet sizes and
other system characteristics that were more typical of medium-sized
urbanized area systems. Many of the new initiatives that emerged from
the MPO process in the first years had a transit emphasis. Under the MPO
framework, flexible funds were now available to purchase bicycle racks
for the bus fleet as well as additional buses. Transit studies that
would not have been done otherwise were other recipients of flexible
funds. The three policy board members operating a transit system made up
for the absence of a "transit" vote.

After the creation of TCAT, the City of Ithaca, Tompkins County, and
Cornell continued to be strong advocates for transit. Now TCAT itself
has a voice as non-voting member of the board as well. Some of the
policy board representatives from the former transit operators also sit
on the TCAT board. Since some of the ITCTC board members are wearing
many hats, there is motivation to not leave TCAT as the sole advocate of
transit on the board. The TCAT planner explained that, although there
may not always be enough money around to fund all of the transit project
or studies the board supports, transit is at the heart of the MPO's
transportation planning process.

# MPO Products

Another early challenge faced by ITCTC was that the first TIP and
Transportation Plan had to be completed within one year of the
director's hiring. At the time, the MPO was still working to increase
its technical capacity so creating programs and plans based on solid
data was very difficult. To compensate for this initial lack in
technical expertise, the MPO placed a priority on the public involvement
process in the first years. As one county official puts it, "being
Ithaca, everyone is an expert."

With the TIP, NYSDOT's Regional office had a priority of projects that
predated the MPO. The initial TIP bore a strong correlation to the state
list, but as both the state and the local officials on the policy board
were educated on the proper role for an MPO, the state and local project
selection process was melded over a few years.

The first Plan had been a challenge because there had not been a
regional framework for thinking about transportation planning before.
One body, the Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Commission, predated
the MPO and had attempted to achieve consensus for the construction of
new arterials in the urban area. It had been an advisory group that was
defunct as of the formation of the MPO. It took time for all of the
stakeholders to adapt to an organization with the authority and the
access to resources that the MPO wielded.

Work on the Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) and the other
certification documents was enhanced by the access to documents produced
previously by the MPO's peers in the state. In the "pre-internet" era,
it was difficult to get copies of documents. The former ITCTC director
considered the New York State Association of MPOs (NYS AMPO) to be a
great resource in the early years. The ability to obtain hard copies of
other MPO's certification documents contributed greatly to the
development of ITCTC's own documents in the early years. Over time,
ITCTC became even more involved with NYS AMPO.

Note: Four individuals involved in the ITCTC were contacted for this
study. They included both the first and the current MPO directors, a
Tompkins County planning official now employed by TCAT, and NYSDOT
official from the regional office. Much of the information on the
formation of the MPO was obtained from a 1993 paper written by Dwight
Mengel titled "A Short History: Creating the Ithaca-Tompkins County
Transportation Council."

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Source: Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council