In order to use limited funds wisely, the MPO and the state must develop Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) priorities that accurately reflect the availability of funds.  A realistic transportation program will ensure that state and federal funds can be fully accessed, fewer projects will be delayed, and cost overruns will have a minimal ripple effect on other projects.  

The TIP is the mechanism by which the MPO programs funding for improvements over a four-year period.  It programs federal-aid funds for transit projects, and state and federal-aid funds for roadway projects. The TIP is financially constrained: the MPO can only include projects for which funds are expected to be available.  However, actual cost of construction routinely exceeds the programmed cost, due to delays, extensions, and redesigns.  The TIP is revised numerous times each year to account for these overruns, which occur due to the inclusion of:

• projects that are not ready for construction;
• more projects than available funding can support; or
• more projects than MassHighway has the capacity to plan and construct.  

The inclusion of borderline projects in the program’s “out years” is also costly and undermines the effectiveness of the transportation planning process. Inclusion of poorly ranked projects encourages unrealistic expectations and unnecessary spending by municipal proponents, who often base their planning and MPO advocacy efforts on the belief that projects will eventually be funded.  

The statewide TIP (STIP) prepared by the Department of Transportation, is a compilation of all the regional priorities.  However, the Federal Highway Administration recently disapproved the STIP based on a determination that that the plan was not financially constrained.  As a result, the disbursement of federal transportation funding to the state was held up and dozens of projects were delayed, leading to even higher costs.  

A more accurate assessment of project readiness will help the MPO to program money for construction only to projects that are mature.  A pre-approval process accompanied by access to design funding would improve the quality and readiness of projects reviewed by the MPO.  This process should be structured to reject projects that do not meet a basic criteria threshold.   Approved projects would be eligible for funding for design, and rejected projects would receive recommendations on how they could be revised to improve consideration.  Such a process would limit the number of inappropriate projects reaching the MPO and would improve the readiness of those that do advance.   

In the long term, the MPO should consider adopting controls to reduce “over-programming” of future years.  Such controls might state that projects programmed for the out years should consist of no more than a certain percentage of expected funding levels for those years.  As a result, the programming process would be less vulnerable to cost overruns or funding constraints. 

23.a    The MPO should develop a pre-approval process that is a condition for further consideration in the TIP process

23.b    The MPO should develop a program to provide design funding for approved projects and technical assistance for rejected projects

23.c      The MPO should regularly and publicly evaluate the TIP to identify the number of projects that have been delayed and the costs of delay

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