 Howdy, welcome to the Fort Worth MTP. This is the update of the master thoroughfare plan. The following presentation contains the same content as the material presented in the initial round of public input meetings that have been held April 7th through the 13th of 2015. The MTP update was initiated in late 2014 by the Fort Worth City Council and the overall process is anticipated to be complete in late 2016. This presentation is aimed at providing an overview of the efforts to update the MTP and associated design standards, give an overview of the schedule and process going forward, but then more importantly providing a venue for feedback. For those of you listening in on the web, a mind mixer application tailored to the MTP will enable you to provide your thoughts and input as to what's needed as part of this update. The purpose of the MTP is to establish a framework for the location and alignment of major roadway facilities. These facilities are aimed at long term accommodating growth and development of the community. Just as important is really the function of the roadway to serve growth as well as redevelopment. A lot of new redevelopment initiatives are now promoting more walkable environments with a variety of land uses within. So form and function are just as important in the consideration of the MTP. The MTP will focus on the arterial network, that's how the current plan is set up, that's how the proposed update will be set up focusing on the arterial network. From a historic perspective, Thurfer planning in Fort Worth stretches back to the late 1920s. The Bartholomew plan, among other things, recommended the Hemphill-Lamar connector and Fort Worth's first traffic circle at Blue Bonnet Road. In 1956, the Grune plan produced a more walkable downtown with a sidewalk system that enabled the downtown to grow. Many updates have been implemented since that time, mainly to address growth and development of the city, but also redevelopment of the community, particularly with the urban villages design. The 2009 plan acknowledged a shift in the consideration of other modes of travel. Recommended policies that included improved street and pedestrian connectivity, reduced speeds in neighborhood areas, and accommodations for bicyclists highlighted that plan. Among other things, updated to traffic impact study requirements and a look at how to reduce the number of arterial crossings with railroads. At the outset of the MTP update process, project issues and goals were initially identified. From an issues perspective, a variety of things were initially identified and include roadway alignments that aren't realistically constrained by physical barriers such as floodplains, creeks, streams, railroads. There are affairs that don't match intended land uses. The potential of roadway oversizing for the land uses that are being served. Functional classifications that are inflexible when considering adjacent land uses. Transportation networks that don't consider multimodal planning and some of the planning that is going on with adjacent communities and or other agencies. Finally, numerous gaps in continuity have been identified. A lot of changing growth in dynamics of adjacent communities have created some issues and gaps in the network. Those need to be addressed. From a goals perspective, the MTP should consider improved integration of transit, bicyclists and pedestrians. The right sizing of streets relative to the intended land uses of adjacent areas, whether in urban or suburban environments. A better balance of mobility and access particularly on key corridors or future transit corridors. More efficient routes, a lot of discontinuity in some of the street network need to have better connectivity to promote more efficient travel and layout of streets. A significant amount of redevelopment that considers a range of land uses and mixed use environments within the community needs to be addressed by the MTP as does some of the larger scale master plan developments that are occurring in the western, northern, southwestern sector of the community. And then finally, roadways need to have the ability to integrate with the surrounding land uses. In other words, in order to promote more walkable environments, some of the streets need to be considerate of those kinds of activities that are occurring. This update of the MTP will consider complete streets and context sensitive streets as part of the design of street types for consideration. Complete streets refers to the design of streets for all users of transportation, vehicular, bikes, pedestrian and transit. Context sensitive considers the surrounding land uses that traverse a street corridor. The notion that one street type fits all doesn't apply anymore. If you look at the image below, you see a street type that traverses from an urban environment to a suburban to a rural area. That same street type has different qualities and characteristics for addressing the adjacent land use and how the street is used. The new MTP will be considerate of those kinds of things. Scoping of the MTP includes seven major task areas. Real tasks that are underway include the definition of street types, the establishment of design standards and guidelines for each of the cross sections of street types, as well as addressing connectivity and alignment issues within the Thurafur plan network. Other task orders which may overlap current task initiatives include the establishment of access management and intersection guidelines conducive to complete streets and context sensitivity, collaboration with the T on transit connectivity and high capacity transit corridors, update of the traffic impact study requirements and the definition of short and long term projects and the associated prioritization to address long term growth and needs. The MTP consultant team will work with a project task force that will serve to guide the conduct of the study as well as provide final recommendations to the planning commission and city council. This nine member committee was appointed by the mayor and the city council. To further support the MTP update, a resource panel comprised of technical and professional stakeholders was appointed by the city. This panel of experts will support the process by reviewing current and proposed MTP alignments, provide input on street types and design elements, as well as providing input on the amendment processes to the MTP. The resource panel contains over 40 members and is comprised of various professional and stakeholder groups throughout the community. Several subtasks will be performed as part of the MTP update process, the first being information gathering and coordination. Within this task will be the collection of plans and design standards from agencies and communities adjacent to Fort Worth. All that data will be compiled and mapped so that the MTP ultimately can consider connectivity to other planning initiatives. A peer city literature search will be conducted of communities that have implemented complete street space plans. The idea is to garner some of their best practices and see how they could be tailored to Fort Worth. Peer cities that are being reviewed include Charlotte, Indianapolis, Denver, Kansas City, Jacksonville. And then input was also solicited from the task force on the resource panel as to what are some of the issues and needs of the update. We have visited with the city staff, a city staff planning charrette was conducted to understand growth, the direction of growth, key issues of the MTP, key needs of the MTP, the amendment processes associated with it, so that the consultant team could have a handle on critical processes that need to be considered as part of policy update. Finally, the public outreach, that is something that is being conducted as part of the April 7th through 13th public input meeting outreach. Another subtask is the evaluation of the functional classification system. As alluded to earlier, the current MTP has three arterial types of streets along with three associated design standards. The idea is to develop a street type nomenclature that allows flexibility for application to different contexts of land uses along corridors. That will be evaluated and addressed. Travel demand forecasting will also be conducted to assess the ability of the arterial network to accommodate long-term growth. The idea there is if the arterial network can be right sized where possible, then there will be recommendations to do that. A success story as it relates to street types is in Kansas City. The consultant team evaluated the thoroughfare plan that consists of five basic types of arterial sections and evaluating complete streets and context-sensitive needs. Five cross sections were expanded to the ability to consider up to 42 varying cross sections. This flexibility enables staff to consider different kinds of considerations, particularly as it relates to applications within the parkway area, changes in the boulevard network, incorporation of non-motorized nodes, modes of development, variations in street widths, medians, parking, on-street parking, as well as new flexibility for developers. In the next slide, the variation in street types is evident here in an activity street type that was identified for Kansas City. In this context, the activity street is aimed at addressing activity within centers that include a variety of land uses, most notably retailer-oriented, high-intensity mixed-use type applications aimed at transportation choice and walkability. The variation in the roadway street types enables staff to consider the variation in land uses and what are some of the desires for application of on-street, transit and pedestrian realm applications. The street types approach is not something that's new. It's been adopted by many cities across the U.S. In the next slide, images of the application of varying street types to context-sensitive nature development is illustrated. Charlotte, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, San Francisco, all those communities have an approach that considers design flexibility for sensitivity to adjacent land uses. Another sub-task is the development of a travel-demand forecast model. A model, a sub-area model will be developed for Fort Worth. This model has been tailored from the NCT Cog Regional Model, but is being enhanced. Do you consider demographic projections that are consistent with the Fort Worth comprehensive plan that has a more robust and defined roadway network defined? This model will be used to evaluate all areas of Fort Worth, but most importantly so that appropriate roadway sizing can be considered as part of these street types development and application. Another key sub-task within the update process will be the evaluation of the MTP roadway alignments. The MTP network, as it currently exists, will be evaluated for connectivity with adjacent communities as well as efficiency, network efficiency, but then also will be evaluated for the ability to minimize impacts as it relates to roadways traversing floodplains, streams, waters, railroad crossings, bridge crossings at tollways, at freeways and other highways. Crossings of these facilities are very expensive. The idea is to try to reduce the number or at least coordinate the number of crossings to minimize expenditure for long-term investment considerations. But then finally, collaboration with the T on high capacity corridors, corridors which will be aimed at considering transit alternatives and being able to consider those long-term within the public rights of way. By way of overall project schedule, project was initiated in late 2014. The anticipated completion is spring of 2016. Highlighted on this graphic are the key tasks within the overall conduct of study. The tasks highlighted in yellow are those that are underway now. Throughout the initial tasks, there are several highlighted milestones. This is coordination with not only the task force, but input from the resource panel, briefings with city council, continuous coordination with city staff. Then also input, public input through a variety of planning workshops. Initial input is slated for April, mid-April. A follow-up input will be slated for late summer. And then another round of input to draft recommendations will be slated at late 2015, early 2016. Subsequent tasks are highlighted in white. Those are anticipated to be initiated a little later in the process, but then overlap internally within the conduct of the study. In terms of next steps and upcoming schedule, there will be the initial rounds of public input slated for early April. Four meeting locations have been identified, April 7th through April 13th. There will be the ability to provide input through the MTP website and mind mixer. Late April will be follow-up meetings with the resource panel to review information that was received by the consultant team from the public input process, review initial street types and associated design elements, present alignment selection criteria as it relates to the evaluation of alignments within the MTP, then more importantly to receive feedback from the resource panel on those critical input areas. That information will then be presented to the task force so they could monitor the update of the MTP and associated input from the public and the resource panel. For those that attended the public input meetings in early April, after this initial presentation, there was a small breakout session to facilitate small group discussion. The idea was to get input on critical transportation issues and needs from the public. Several boards were provided for the public to provide comment and feedback on as well as to address any particular questions related to the MTP update process. An exit survey was also provided. This survey is available on the mind mixer also as it relates to transportation needs for the MTP update. For more information regarding the MTP update, please visit our project website at fortworthtexas.gov forward slash MTP. The website contains this presentation as well as a variety of other things related to the MTP. We certainly appreciate your participation in this very important project and look forward to seeing you in future public meetings. Thanks again.