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BACKGROUND
The Houston region has undergone an incredible demographic transformation over the past 20 years. It faces rapid growth through 2035, adding another 3.5 million residents to the eight-country region. Two million of these persons will be in Harris County – the equivalent of adding a second Houston to Harris County. More than 600,000 of these new residents will be within the city limits of Houston. With this tremendous growth, the Houston region will face many transportation challenges. Mobility has been consistently ranked as a top concern by residents of the Houston region.
GOAL
The City of Houston is trying to get ahead of transportation challenges. The Houston Planning Commission has established several committees to examine a range of development and growth issues. One of the committees, the General Plan committee, established mobility and drainage as top priorities and recommended a programmatic framework to address these issues. City Mobility Planning (CMP) will be the framework for evaluating transportation issues in the city and extra-territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ).
SCOPE OF PLANNING
Development of the City of Houston’s City Mobility Planning (CMP) will be phased. Phase 1 is to be completed by December 31, 2008 and includes the following tasks.
Task 1: Project Management Plan
Task 2: Data Collection
The goal of the task is to collect the data needed to enhance the travel demand model for Houston. It will include detailed information from other cities that will aid in developing Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) for use in Houston CMP.
Task 3: Measures of Effectiveness
Using national best practices (as collected in Task 2) and industry standards, the CMP will propose an initial list of Measures of Effectiveness that can be used to assess transportation system performance in Houston.
Task 4: Mobility Tools
The CMP will provide a comprehensive list of mobility tools. The list of potential improvement types/solutions will be defined at a conceptual level and will consider Context Sensitive Design principles. It is envisioned that more than one solution could be used for each situation, depending on the severity of the problem.
Task 5: New Functional Street Classifications
The purpose of the task is to develop a series of typical street cross sections and to recommend new functional street classifications to be added to the existing functional street classification system for the City’s Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan. Coordination with the City’s Infrastructure Design Manual will be required.
Task 6: Model Development
The purpose of the task is to enhance the H-GAC regional travel demand model throughout the City of Houston. The planning will verify assumptions and inputs of the travel demand model so it best represents the ‘conditions on the ground’ for the base year as well as planned improvements such as t the current City Capital Improvement Plan.
Task 7: City Mobility Planning Report |
