We have received an Appalachian Regional Commission POWER Grant worth over $1.4million for the Shale Power project. The project will develop a regional center to provide technical assistance to manufacturers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio that are seeking to expand into the regions burgeoning shale energy sector.
Shady Avenue in Pittsburgh will undergo nearly a year of scrutiny and planning to improve safety on the busy corridor. City officials partnered with the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, a regional planning body, to analyze crash data, traffic and amenities along the road.
“It’s a very long corridor, there’s a lot of things that are going on,” said Katy Sawyer, a senior project manager with the city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure.
SmartMoves for a Changing Region is the Long Range Plan (LRP) for the 10 county Southwestern Pennsylvania region. SmartMoves establishes the Vision, Goals, and Strategies for the region and also lays out actions and potential implementation partners to advance the goals and strategies, to ultimately achieve the vision. The Regional Vision is a world-class, safe and well maintained, integrated transportation system that provides mobility for all, enables resilient communities, and supports a globally competitive economy. To achieve this vision, the LRP includes a list of projects currently within fiscal capacity and projects beyond the fiscal capacity. Scroll through this application to view the LRP transportation projects.
“Planning for operations” encompasses a variety of activities that planners and transportation system operators collaborate on in order to maximize the efficiency of the transportation system and to ensure that transportation services are delivered in as safe, reliable, and secure a manner as possible. In addition to having many congestion mitigation and system efficiency benefits, planning for operations is required under Federal law.
SPC developed the region’s first Regional Operations Plan (ROP) in
2007. This plan documents the region’s approach to operational
activities and seeks to identify how to optimize the existing
transportation system. SPC provided updates to this plan in 2011 and
2015 and has subsequently mainstreamed the ROP into its Long Range
Transportation Plan (LRTP) process each time.
Statewide operational planning has evolved based on federal guidelines and knowledge development. In 2018, PennDOT developed the Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Guidebook which is the statewide approach used to optimize the operational performance of existing infrastructure. Utilizing this new guideline, SPC updated the ROP in 2019. The seven priority areas identified in previous ROP versions remain in the 2019 update. They are:
With assistance from SPC’s member Planning Departments, PennDOT’s Engineering Districts, the PennDOT Bureau of Maintenance and Operations (BOMO), the ten regional transit operators and other regional stakeholders, the 2019 ROP was completed utilizing a series of workshops over a six month period. Through this collaborative process, the 2019 ROP developed over 60 proposed projects, studies, and initiatives.
This ROP recognizes that three important ways to optimize the existing transportation network are to incorporate intelligent systems, improve management of incidents and events, and encourage modal shift.