TCSP-1999 Grant Proposals

Regional Development & Mobility Principles
Research Triangle Region, North Carolina

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Regional Development & Mobility Principles: Implementation Strategies
Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot Program
Proposal from the Triangle J Council of Governments

Abstract

The Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will develop strategies to change the 6-county Research Triangle region's current pattern of development from a conventional suburban expansion model to one based more on principles supportive of compact urban form with walkable neighborhoods, transit orientation, and greenspace and environmental conservation. The project builds on an extensive effort to examine regional development choices that is culminating in the selec-tion of a preferred development pattern. The project covers a 3,500 square mile metropolitan region with a range of urban, suburban, rural, and natural areas that is home to more than 1 million people.

The Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will have four major elements:

• A detailed description and analysis comparing the land use, transportation, fiscal and environmental implications of the preferred regional development pattern to the current development pattern.
• A comprehensive set of strategies composed of design and development standards, infrastructure policies, fiscal tools, and legislative authority needed to achieve the preferred development pattern.
• A set of computer visualizations and supporting explanatory material showing how places within the region could develop differently under the preferred pattern or under the current pattern.
• A community outreach and feedback effort to explain the project's work, monitor communities' views of the work, and revise the work to address community concerns.

The project can help show other regions that examine different development patterns how to implement their preferred pattern. Completion of the project and its evaluation plan will enable other rapidly growing regions with a history of fragmented regional planning authority to:

• develop more successful regional visioning and planning processes,
• establish more extensive regional planning partnerships,
• develop better-informed and more realistic sets of implementation strategies, and
• undertake more effective community education and outreach efforts.

Project Description

The Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will develop strategies to change the 6-county Research Triangle region's current pattern of development from a conventional suburban expansion model to one based more on principles supportive of compact urban form with walkable neighborhoods, transit orientation, and greenspace and environmental conservation. In the short term, the project will develop strategies needed to change the development pattern and examine the major consequences of those strategies. Ultimately, the project can result in a regional pattern able to sustain the four core values expressed by citizens in the region: (1) sustained community charac-ter, (2) continued economic development, (3) improved mobility, and (4) preserved greenspace.

The project builds on two on-going regional development and mobility planning projects:

• The Greater Triangle Regional Council's Regional Development Choices Project, and
• The Triangle Transit Authority's Regional Transit Plan.

The Regional Development Choices Project created three regional development scenarios and is gauging community sentiment about the scenarios and the development principles embodied by the scenarios. Among other elements, each scenario includes different highway and fixed guideway transit components. A one page summary of the project scenarios is attached. The project will conclude in June 1999 with a recommendation on a preferred regional development pattern and set of development principles.

The Regional Transit Plan has developed a three-phase system of fixed-guideway transit and regional bus routes. The first phase is in preliminary engineering; the viability of the latter two phases is heavily dependent on the pattern of development that unfolds in the region.

The project will also be closely coordinated with the comprehensive transportation planning efforts currently underway by the two Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) in the Research Triangle Region.

The Regional Development and Mobility Principles project will have four major elements, each addressing a crucial question related to the preferred development pattern:

• What would it mean? A detailed description and analysis comparing the land use, transportation, fiscal and environmental implications of the preferred regional development pattern to the current development pattern.
• What would it take? A comprehensive set of strategies composed of design and development standards, infrastructure policies, fiscal tools, and legislative authority needed to implement the principles of the preferred development pattern.
• What would it be like? A set of computer visualizations and supporting explanatory material showing how places within the region could develop differently under the preferred pattern or under the current pattern.
• What do you think? A community outreach and feedback effort to explain the project's work, monitor communities' views of the work, and revise the work to address community concerns.

The proposed project can introduce a unique and innovative planning approach that can not be achieved through the traditional planning processes in place in the Research Triangle region and common to other metropolitan regions. These traditional planning processes are characterized by:

• Geographic fragmentation. Many planning efforts address only a portion of the metropolitan region; for example, the Research Triangle Region is split between two MPOs and has rural areas that are not part of a formal regional transportation planning structure.
• Issue fragmentation. Many planning efforts are oriented towards a single issue; for example, improved coordination between land use and transportation planning is being pursued in the region, but land use planning is largely a function of local land use plans, while transportation planning is largely a function of MPO and state-level transportation plans.
• Sector fragmentation. Planning responsibility remains almost exclusively a government function, although most planning efforts incorporate private sector and civic sector stakeholders.
• Intergovernmental fragmentation. In many states, including North Carolina, there is no comprehensive state or regional planning structure through which local plans can be coordinated with regional and statewide goals.

The proposed project will address these concerns by:

• Transcending institutional boundaries, both geographic and intergovernmental, through the regional scale of the project and a focus on local, regional, and state-level strategies;
• Transcending issue compartmentalization through a focus on development, mobility, and environmental quality; and
• Building a robust partnership of public, private, civic and academic participants.

The main tasks involved in each of the four major elements of this innovative planning approach are summarized below.

Element #1. Detailed Description and Analysis Comparing the Preferred Regional Pattern to the Current Pattern

The first project element will provide a detailed, Geographic Information System-based description of the preferred regional pattern of development together with a similar detailed description of the current pattern, then conduct a comparative analysis of the two patterns across a wide range of community, mobility, and environmental measures. The preferred pattern will be selected in June 1999 as the culmination of the Regional Development Choices project. The Choices project is described more fully in the Purpose and Criteria section of this proposal. The four main tasks of this element are:

1. Detail the current and preferred regional development patterns,
2. Map the patterns on the Geographic Information System,
3. Define the transportation, environmental, and community analysis measures, and
4. Perform the transportation, environmental and community analysis.

Although the preferred development pattern has not been finalized, community outreach to date suggests that it may differ from the current pattern across 10 principles:

1. The location of mixed-use, pedestrian and transit-supportive development
2. The compactness or regional form of development
3. The major thoroughfare network
4. The interconnectedness of neighborhoods
5. The transit system
6. The network of conserved greenspace
7. The siting of elements of the civic realm (schools, parks, cultural and entertainment facilities)
8. The designation and preservation of rural areas
9. The designation and support for regional activity centers
10. Regional fiscal benefit and burden sharing

The comparative analysis of the preferred and current patterns will focus on a set of analysis measures related to the regional development principles. Although a final set of measures will be developed by the project partnership, the Triangle J Council of Governments anticipates that the following measures may form part of the analysis set:

Potential Analysis Measures

1. Performance of mobility system [congestion measures, travel time measures, travel delay measures, "mode option" measures (how many trips could be made by more than one mode), mobility network "connectivity" measures (how interconnected road and ped/bike networks are)
2. Cost of mobility system [capital and operating/maintenance measures by mode, including ITS features]
3. Air quality and energy use [measures of criteria pollutants and energy use from transport model and air quality model]
4. Amount of development in water supply watersheds [critical area and protected area measures, non-point source runoff impact measures, point-source discharge location measures]
5. Amount of rural land consumed in urban or suburban development [soil quality measures, use-value assessment or other farmland measures]
6. Access to jobs [income and demographic measures, welfare-to-work program impacts, telecommuting support measures]
7. Water & sewer infrastructure [cost measures, environmental impact/risk measures]
8. Amount of protected greenspace [typology and functional measures, cost measures, access measures, links to water quality measures]
9. Neighborhood livability/character [measures of amount of development in mixed use, compact form measures, measures of access to civic realm (parks, schools, libraries, cultural and entertainment facilities)]
10. Economic sustainability [workforce access measures, business cost & value measures, workforce satisfaction measures]
11. Community fiscal condition [tax base, revenue and cost measures]

The Triangle J Council of Governments will use a variety of analysis tools, based on traffic analysis zone level data in Triangle J's GIS databases. Among other tools, TJCOG will use its ARC/INFO GIS software, the new regional transportation model, the state's air quality models, and water quality evaluation models to compare quantitative impacts.

Element #2. Comprehensive Set of Strategies

The heart and soul of the Development and Mobility Principles project will be the creation of a set of implementation strategies that can be adopted by state government, local government, the private sector and non-profit organizations in order for the preferred development pattern to be realized.

These strategies will be organized into three categories:

• Design and development standards
• Infrastructure polices
• Fiscal policies

The strategies will be developed for each of the development and mobility principles described in Major Project Element #1.

Development of the strategies will involve four main tasks:

1. Defining the range of implementation strategies to be considered for each development and mobility principle;
2. Researching the strategies;
3. Selecting recommended strategies; and
4. Authoring the specific design and development standards, infrastructure policies, fiscal mechanisms and legislation needed to implement the strategies at the local, regional, or state level.

The extensive partnership established for this project will be able to define the strategies, contribute to the research on the strategies, and provide guidance on authoring the standards, policies and legislation to implement the strategies. Both the partnership and broader community input will be used to select the recommended strategies.

Presentation of the final set of recommended strategies and their implementation steps will receive special focus in the project. A variety of formats will be used; experience from the Development Choices project indicates that different people are receptive to differing formats and levels of detail, ranging from short, simple, graphically-rich fact sheets to more detailed descriptions with supporting documentation.

Special care will also be taken to present the implementation strategies as a comprehensive, cohesive package, stressing that it is the combination of strategies that can achieve the desired result.

Element #3. Computer Visualizations

A critically important element in adopting a new set of development and mobility principles will be to show citizens and decision-makers how places they care about might change or, in some cases, be preserved.

A limited amount of visualization was done in the Regional Choices project, to show how typical urban, suburban, and rural locations might differ under the different scenarios. The community feedback effort indicated that these visualizations were crucial to both educate citizens and garner effective responses to the scenarios.

Exhibit #1. Computer Visualization of Regional Development & Mobility Principles

Element #4. Community Outreach & Feedback Effort

The proposed project will build on the strong, grass-roots community involvement effort used in the Regional Choices Project. That project is taking three growth scenarios around the region asking people what development pattern they wish to pursue. Thousands of people are getting an opportunity to make their voices heard, not just through traditional public and business meetings, but through outreach to schools, churches, civic groups, and neighborhoods.

The proposed project will use the extensive network of contacts from this previous effort to enable citizens and leaders to:

• respond to the details of the preferred development pattern, and
• solicit ideas and feedback for the strategies to implement the development and mobility principles of the preferred pattern.

In addition, the Triangle J Council of Governments will use a web site to display:

• the details of the preferred development pattern,
• visualizations of selected sites,
• research and progress on implementation strategies, and
• questionnaires seeking input and feedback.

Purpose and Criteria

The Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will address each of the Transportation and Community and System Preservation Program's purposes and criteria.

Examine development patterns and identify strategies to encourage private sector development patterns which achieve the goals of the Transportation and Community and System Preservation Program.

The proposed Regional Development & Mobility Principles project is centered on a detailed examination of a new development pattern for the region and the strategies needed to implement the new pattern. The outline for this new pattern is now being finalized as the conclusion to the Regional Development Choices project. A partnership between the Greater Triangle Regional Council, as sponsor, and the Triangle J Council of Governments, as contractor, the Development Choices project has been a substantial, sustained effort to engage in a broad community dialogue about alternative development patterns for the Research Triangle Region. The Development Choices project consisted of 5 tasks:

• Identifying core regional values; four were selected:
  • Keeping the region a "community of communities," each with its own distinctive character,
  • Preserving the green character of the region,
  • Maintaining good mobility, and
  • Sustaining economic success.
• Documenting historic growth trends and the current development pattern in the region.

• Understanding the foundations for future regional development; task forces and presentations were organized on:
  • Demographic and economic trends,
  • Design and development standards,
  • Infrastructure, and
  • Fiscal policies.
• Creating scenarios of alternative future regional development patterns.

• Visualizing the scenarios and engaging in a broad community outreach program to solicit citizen views.

The Development Choices project is now in the final community outreach phase, which has involved a large regional conference, an outreach video, brochures describing alternative development scenarios, and community presentations to groups as diverse as chambers of commerce, churches, schools, neighborhood organizations, local governments, economic development commissions, and professional associations.

The beginning point for the Regional Development & Mobility Principles project will be the preferred regional development pattern that emerges from this regional visioning effort in the spring of 1999. It will carry forward with the detailed analysis of the preferred pattern and the steps necessary to achieve the preferred pattern. The emerging consensus for a preferred pattern is one that is more compact, promotes walkable neighborhoods and transit orientation, and does more to conserve the green character and environmental quality of the region; goals of the TCSP as outlined below.

Improve the efficiency of the transportation system.

Understanding how a new set of development and mobility principles can improve the efficiency of the existing and planned transportation system will be a crucial element of the project. A new process to develop the state Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) in North Carolina has resulted in a much more realistic set of projects by including a revised costing mechanism. One consequence has been to significantly scale back the amount of new road construction covered in the two draft metropolitan TIPs for the region. Analyzing how the preferred development pattern might influence the efficiency of the current road network, the local transit systems, the planned regional transit system and the fledgling bike and pedestrian network will help local leaders make better-informed transportation investment decisions.

The project will also incorporate the evolving Intelligent Transportation Systems planning in the region, based on the 1995 Plan for the Deployment of Advanced Transportation Systems in the Triangle Region and specific project proposals such as the ITS surveillance and detection project for the 13-mile NC 55 corridor leading to the Research Triangle Park.

Reduce the impacts of transportation on the environment.

The Development & Mobility principles project will address environmental impacts of transportation in a number of ways, focusing on water quality, air quality, open space preservation and wildlife corridor and habitat impacts. One of the principal issues addressed in the development scenarios was the extent of new road construction within water supply watersheds and across major river and stream corridors. In addition, air quality measures will be addressed through the new regional transportation model that is under development and that will serve as an analysis tool for comparing the preferred development pattern to the current pattern. In addressing air quality impacts, the project will draw heavily on the experience, expertise and guidance of four of the committed project partners who have been participating in North Carolina's ongoing Air Quality Coordination meetings: the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the N.C. Department of Transportation and the two Metropolitan Planning Organizations.

The project will also incorporate local and regional open space planning efforts, many of which focus on the region's river and stream corridors, and the corresponding wildlife corridor and habitat fragmentation concerns associated with new development and the extension of infrastructure. More extensive preservation of open space is one of the principle components of the emerging consensus around a preferred development pattern.

Reduce the need for costly future investments in public infrastructure.

The project will compare costs of extending highway and fixed guideway transit infrastructure under the current and the preferred development patterns, based on cost factors from the on-going comprehensive transportation planning efforts and the Triangle Transit Authority's regional rail plan.

A similar cost-factor methodology will be used to estimate cost differences for other major infrastructure, such as water and wastewater systems, based on an analysis of system information within the region, and alternative development pattern studies from other North American locations.

Ensure efficient access to jobs, services, and centers of trade.

More than 20,000 households in the region have no automobile available. Although employment in the region has been increasingly suburban, as in other regions, much of the employment, both older urban and newer suburban, remains spread along the spine of the region that will serve as Phase I for the Triangle Transit Authority's regional rail plan. These locations include the downtowns of Raleigh and Durham, the Research Triangle Park, Duke University, North Carolina State University and north Raleigh suburban office sites. The project will examine extensions of regional rail under the preferred development pattern to determine to what degree more people are linked to this "string of pearls" employment distribution.

The project will also incorporate two non-traditional employment access programs in the region which have not been part of the traditional transportation planning process:

• Telecommuting programs targeting major regional employers, such as the research and technology-based companies, and
• Welfare-to-Work access programs being aggressively pursued by two of the project partners: the N.C. Department of Commerce and the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.

These non-traditional approaches to improving employment access are especially important in regions such as the Research Triangle, where the metropolitan-wide unemployment rate is 1.6%. Improving access through programs such as these can help regions expand employment opportunities for those without dependable transportation options or those seeking to better balance work with other needs.

Other Criteria

1. A demonstrated commitment of non-federal resources. The Triangle J Council of Governments will contribute $50,000 of the project cost out of its own local funds. The N.C. Department of Transportation will contribute an additional $5,000 in direct funding to help support the analysis of alternative road standards to support the preferred development pattern. In addition, project partners will provide additional in-kind staff time to the project, conservatively estimated at $35,000. The Regional Development Choices Project, which is creating the preferred regional development pattern that will serve as the basis for this proposal, involved over $250,000 in private, university, and foundation funding.
2. An evaluation component. The project will include an evaluation component that will assess each of the four main tasks:
   • How well the detailed description and comparative analysis addressed citizens' and community leaders' questions about changing the current development pattern;
   • How well the strategy development provided detailed information on what steps and costs would be needed to implement the preferred development pattern;
   • How well the visualizations helped people understand the differences that could occur on the ground under the preferred development pattern; and
   • How successful the community outreach effort was at reaching both a large number of citizens and community leaders, and how diverse the audience was.

     The evaluation plan methodology is described in greater detail later in this proposal.

3. An equitable distribution of grants with respect to diversity of populations. As a regional scale project, the proposal will address development and mobility issues in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the region and the impact of our development and mobility choices on the broad range of socioeconomic groups found in the region. The emerging consensus around a preferred development pattern that involves a more extensive transit system and increased emphasis on areas with existing infrastructure investments such as downtowns and in-town neighborhoods may especially provide access benefits for the estimated 20,000 households without a car available and residents with modest means.

4. The participation of non-traditional partners. A strong component of the project is the direct involvement of organizations that do not have voting membership in the MPO structure used to guide transportation planning in the region. One set of non-traditional partners includes organizations that bring substantial private sector and university participation to the effort: the Greater Triangle Regional Council, the Research Triangle Foundation, and the Raleigh and Durham Chambers of Commerce. A second valuable set of non-traditional partners involve organizations oriented towards land use planning and environmental quality: the Triangle Land Conservancy, the North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, the N.C. Division of Community Assistance, and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Coordination

Project coordination, and the partnerships that will enable this coordination, are a crucial part of the proposed project. A series of nine regional planning case studies prepared by the Triangle J Council of Governments as part of the Development Choices project indicated the importance of an institutionalized regional framework for effective regional planning. This project will contribute to the creation of such a framework in the Research Triangle region and can help guide other regions in creating similar frameworks.

The Triangle J Council of Governments is a regional planning and service agency consisting of the municipal and county governments in the six-county region. Triangle J's newly formed Smart Growth Committee, with appointees from member local governments, will provide oversight for the project. Triangle J's land use planners, environmental staff, and GIS specialists will staff the project and provide links to their counterparts in local governments in the region.

The Triangle J Council of Governments is one of three regional organizations with membership on the technical coordinating committees of both MPOs serving the Research Triangle Region. Triangle J also participates in the activities of the Regional Model Team that is preparing a new transportation model for the region. Triangle J will work through the existing MPO framework to coordinate the activities of the Regional Development & Mobility Principles project with the ongoing comprehensive transportation planning and modeling efforts of the MPOs. In addition, Triangle J serves on management and advisory committees for the Triangle Transit Authority's regional fixed guideway planning efforts and will coordinate this project with the Authority.

Partners

Building a successful, sustained project partnership will be an essential component of the project. Efforts to adopt regional strategies to guide and coordinate land use planning, infrastructure provision and environmental protection in North America have been most successful in regions with a sophisticated regional planning institutional structure, a high level of investment in planning, and state or provincial requirements and incentives for planning, places such as Portland, Oregon, the Minneapolis-St. Paul region and Toronto, Ontario. The rapidly growing sunbelt regions of the United States lack most or all of these conditions.

The Triangle J Council of Governments has placed great emphasis on building a high-level, effective partnership consisting of organizations with decision-making authority and community influence. The project will involve at least 12 organizational partners, plus special state legislative and executive partners, all of whom have pledged their involvement (see attached letters of commitment). The formal project partners, the strengths the partners bring to the project, and their roles and responsibilities, are summarized below.

• The Greater Triangle Regional Council. The council consists of 38 regional leaders, including the mayors of the four largest cities, the county commission chairs from the six counties, the presidents and chancellors of the four major research universities, and selected business and civic leaders. As sponsors of the Development Choices project, the council is highly committed to implementation of the preferred pattern and will serve as a direct conduit to business and university leaders.

• The Research Triangle Foundation. The foundation is the developer and manager of the Research Triangle Park, home to many of the largest employers in the region and more than 30,000 workers. The foundation will provide the direct link to these employers and their concerns.

• The Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization. The MPO conducts transportation planning for a portion of the region and will provide guidance on mobility principles and a link to on-going comprehensive transportation planning.

• The Capitol Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. The MPO conducts transportation planning for a portion of the region and will provide guidance on mobility strategies and a link to on-going comprehensive transportation planning.

• The Triangle Transit Authority. The authority is planning a fixed guideway system, with a first phase scheduled to open in 2004. The authority will provide guidance on mobility strategies and a link to first phase and longer term regional transit planning.

• The Triangle Land Conservancy. The conservancy is a non-profit owner and manager of environmentally sensitive lands and will provide guidance on open space and environmental strategies.

• The North Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has undertaken a sustained effort related to development in the region and will provide both guidance and a link to the environmental community.

• The North Carolina Department of Transportation. The NCDOT is contributing both time and resources to the project and will provide guidance on a range of mobility and land use-related issues.

• The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. NCDENR will provide guidance on environmental strategies and state policies and legislation.

• The North Carolina Department of Commerce Division of Community Assistance. DCA will provide guidance on land use strategies and state policies and legislation.

• The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. The Raleigh Chamber will provide guidance on economic development strategies and serve as an important link to small and large businesses.

• The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce. The Durham Chamber will provide guidance on economic development strategies and serve as an important link to small and large businesses.

All of the project partners have designated project liaisons. These senior level staff members will serve as technical advisors to the overall project in addition to serving as liaisons to business, local government, civic, and state elected leaders.

The project will also include special state legislative and executive leadership partners consisting of:

• Members of the region's state house and senate delegations, and
• Representatives from the Governor's office.

Representatives of the legislative delegation and the Governor's office have committed to providing guidance on strategies requiring state legislative or administrative action.

In addition to the formal organizational and state legislative and executive partners who have pledged staff level participation and/or matching funding, the Triangle J Council of Governments will solicit the involvement of other non-traditional civic and educational partners, specifically:

• neighborhood councils,
• environmental organizations,
• historic preservation societies,
• downtown and main street programs, and
• the region's four major research universities: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C. State University, North Carolina Central University, and Duke University.

Initial contact with these civic and educational partners has indicated a keen interest in project participation. Representatives from many of these groups also serve on the technical team of the Triangle J Council of Government's Smart Growth Committee, the committee that will oversee the Development and Mobility Principles project.

Schedule

The project will be completed over an approximately two-year period, with an anticipated ending date of June 2001 for the analysis, strategy development, visualization, and community outreach elements of the project and August 2001 for the evaluation component. All four major project elements will proceed in concert. Reports will be made quarterly to the Triangle Smart Growth Committee, the Board of the Triangle J Council of Governments, the Greater Triangle Regional Council, the two MPOs, and other project partners as desired. A more detailed project schedule, including major milestones is shown below.

Budget and Resources

The total project will cost $540,000 to undertake, including estimated in-kind staff time from the project partners. The Triangle J Council of Governments will provide $50,000 in matching funds to the project to help offset personnel costs. The N.C. Department of Transportation will provide $5,000 in direct matching funds towards the development of strategies to revamp road standards to support the principles of the preferred development pattern. Based on estimates prepared by organization partners, the partners will provide in-kind staff time valued at $35,000 over the two-year period, resulting in a total of $90,000 in direct and in-kind matching funds. Federal funding is requested for the remaining $450,000.

This proposal builds on the work of the Regional Development Choices Project, which was sponsored by the Greater Triangle Regional Council and undertaken by the staff of the Triangle J Council of Governments. The Choices project involved over $250,000 in resources from the private sector, universities, and foundations.

The budget for the four major project elements, plus evaluation and management is:

Project costs by major element, type, and source are summarized on the next page.

Development and Mobility Principles Project Budget

Project Evaluation Plan

A three-part project evaluation plan is proposed that can address short-term, medium-term, and long-term concerns. The plan will provide valuable, measurable results that can be used both in the Research Triangle Region to track progress and guide further efforts, and by the FHWA and other regions to make similar projects more effective.

The short term evaluation will be a process evaluation, consisting of assessment of citizens and community leaders who participate in the project along with measures of the number and characteristics of participants. Medium term evaluation will be a product evaluation, involving monitoring the implementation of the recommended development strategies. Longer term evaluation will include outcome evaluation, tracking how the region's development pattern changes over time.

An effective, systematic evaluation of the project will require continued evaluation beyond the two-year project term. Therefore, as part of the evaluation plan, the Triangle J Council of Governments is committed to continuing to monitor both strategy implementation and the region's development pattern beyond the project term.

The three evaluation components -- short term process evaluation, medium term product evaluation, and long term outcome evaluation -- are summarized below.

Short Term Process Evaluation

The short term process evaluation component will assess the project's four main tasks, with the following objectives:

• How well the comparative analysis addressed citizens' and community leaders' concerns about changing the current development pattern;
• How well the strategy development provided detailed information on what steps and costs would be needed to implement the preferred development pattern;
• How well the visualizations helped people understand the differences that could occur on the ground under the preferred development pattern; and
• How successful the community outreach effort was at reaching both a large number of citizens and community leaders, and how diverse the audience was.

A focus group methodology will be employed to assess the process. The project team will identify appropriate types of groups, e.g. local elected officials, state legislators, businesspeople, participating citizens, then contract with a firm to conduct the focus group analysis. Data obtained from the analysis will be used in the project report so that others can learn of the strengths and weaknesses of the process used in the project.

The focus group-based evaluation task is indicated in the project budget and schedule; results will be available immediately after completion of the four major project elements.

Medium Term Product Evaluation

The Triangle J Council of Governments will conduct the medium-term product evaluation which will track the implementation of the recommended strategies. Within the two-year project term, Triangle J will establish the format for tracking the strategies at the local, state, and regional levels, and for public, private, academic and civic sector organizations. Also within the two-year project term, Triangle J will prepare an initial status report on the strategies.

This review-based methodology will track design and development standards, infrastructure policies and fiscal mechanisms of state and local governments, the private sector, and non-profit organizations.

Continued strategy monitoring will occur on an annual basis beyond the term of the project under the auspices of the Triangle Smart Growth Committee.

The project schedule and budget include the staff resources and timing to undertake the portion of the medium term product evaluation that will occur during the duration of the project grant.

Long Term Outcome Evaluation

The most important evaluation component is the long term outcome evaluation that will monitor changes in development in the region. Because both the preferred development pattern and the current development pattern will be mapped on a Geographic Information System, the Triangle J Council of Governments will be able to periodically compare actual development trends relative to both the preferred and current patterns defined by this project.

Triangle J's GIS is compatible with all the local government GISs in the region and with that of the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. Triangle J also has a history of cooperative ventures in GIS with the state, local governments and regional organizations such as the Triangle Land Conservancy and the Triangle Transit Authority.

Using this GIS-based methodology, Triangle J will prepare an annual development pattern report based on regional development and transportation GIS coverages. The report will be based on data conforming to the analysis measures selected for the project (refer to page 4 of this proposal for a potential list of measures).

Within the two-year project term, Triangle J will establish the format for tracking these development pattern changes. Continued development pattern monitoring will occur on an annual basis beyond the term of the project under the auspices of the Triangle Smart Growth Committee.

The project schedule and budget include the staff resources and timing to undertake the portion of the long term output evaluation that will occur during the duration of the project grant.

Conclusion

The Triangle J Council of Governments believes that the proposed Regional Development and Mobility Principles project provides a unique opportunity to take a carefully crafted vision for regional development and mobility, subject the principles of that vision to a rigorous comparative analysis, then establish the detailed strategies needed to transform the vision into a workable, fundable blueprint for regional development.

What makes this effort unique is the established civic partnership, private sector commitment, and broad community support that will stand behind the preferred development scenario and its development principles. This approach will be a valuable model for other fast-growing regions seeking to find realistic solutions to the challenges of maintaining economic development while sustaining the mobility, environment and community character valued by citizens.

The project will help show other regions how they can integrate the often-fragmented planning for land use, transportation, and environmental quality into a comprehensive approach that does not replace current institutional structures, but brings these structures into a partnership that can better achieve their goals. And it will help show other regions undertaking regional visioning exercises how they can adopt the tools and techniques needed to translate the vision into a reality.

Respectfully Submitted,

Charles Krautler, President

Triangle J Council of Governments

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