This paper was presented at the 89th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board. It discusses the merits of using the Metropolitan Statistical Area instead of the Urbanized Area to establish the planning area boundary of an MPO.
Establishing an MPO Boundary: the MSA vs. UZA Standard
1. Alexander Bond 1
1 The Merits of Using Metropolitan Statistical Areas to Delineate
2 Metropolitan Planning Organization Boundaries
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6 Submission Date: 11/5/2009
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8 Word Count: 6,649 (4,899 in text, 1 table, 6 figures)
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15 Corresponding Author:
16 Alexander Bond, AICP
17 Center for Urban Transportation Research
18 University of South Florida
19 4202 E. Fowler Ave, CUT 100
20 Tampa, FL 33620-5375
21 (813) 974-9779
22 Fax: (813) 974-5168
23 ALBond@cutr.usf.edu
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2. Alexander Bond 2
1 ABSTRACT
2 Since their inception in the 1970s, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have been organized
3 around a geographic unit called an urbanized area (UZA). The complexity of MPO planning duties and
4 the makeup of metropolitan areas have increased over the past four decades. Also, a new delineation of
5 urbanity— the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) — has emerged since MPOs were first created. The
6 paper defines the geography and history associated with MPO designation, and presents evidence that the
7 MSA should replace the UZA as the standard for delineating an MPO’s boundary. Major arguments in
8 favor of the MSA standard include matching MPO boundaries to those of local and regional governments,
9 coordination of data, alignment with air quality conformity airsheds, and improved integration of land use
10 with transportation infrastructure. The paper also analyzes the number and size of MPOs that would be
11 created under an MSA standard. Current trends toward voluntary migration to the MSA standard are also
12 documented. Several policy recommendations are made, which may be useful to policy-makers and MPO
13 leadership.
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3. Alexander Bond 3
1 INTRODUCTION
2 Since their inception in the 1970s, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have been organized
3 around a geographic unit identified by the United States Census Bureau called an urbanized area (UZA).
4 New MPOs are designated for UZAs identified during each decennial (10-year) census. In addition,
5 existing MPO boundaries are changed when their constituent UZA boundaries are altered by the Census
6 results every ten years.
7 The complexity of MPO policy and planning duties has increased over the past four decades, and
8 so has the makeup of a metropolitan region. Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget has
9 created a new delineation of urban organization— the metropolitan statistical area (MSA). Perhaps it is
10 time to reexamine the geographic basis for designating MPOs, in particular the relative advantages of the
11 MSA over the UZA. With the pending expiration of SAFETEA-LU and an upcoming Census, this is an
12 excellent time to debate the merits of using the UZA versus the MSA to define metropolitan regions that
13 require the cooperative, comprehensive, and continuing (3-C) transportation planning process. This
14 paper presents evidence that MSAs should become the standard for designation of an MPO.
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16 BACKGROUND
17 In order to discuss the relative advantages of each MPO designation standard, it is important to
18 understand the definitions being used. The UZA is developed by the US Census Bureau based on
19 information collected during each census. The MSA is produced by the Office of Management and
20 Budget (OMB), using information taken from the census and blended with information from other
21 sources, primarily the Department of Labor. The primary purpose of both geographies is to provide
22 statistical information for use by government agencies. A secondary purpose is to serve as the basis for
23 distribution of program funds that use a formula. A wide array of federal, state, and local executive
24 agencies use these urban definitions and delineations to allocate funding and implement regulations.
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26 Urbanized Area
27 A UZA is a compact area that is entirely urban in character, defined as a contiguous area with more than
28 50,000 people and with a population density greater than 1,000 persons per square mile. The area that
29 meets the density definition is included in the boundary of the UZA, regardless of political boundaries.
30 The “building block” of a UZA is the census block group, which can be as small as one acre. Because the
31 level of analysis is so small, UZAs are often irregular in shape. Further, UZAs pay no attention to
32 political boundaries. Two UZAs cannot share a border, because such a condition would result in a single
33 contiguous geographic unit. According to the 2000 Census, there are 484 UZAs in the United States,
34 which cover just over 2% of the nation’s land area (1). The UZAs currently established in the United
35 States are shown in Figure 1.
4. Alexander Bond 4
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2 FIGURE 1 Urbanized Areas in the United States- 2000.
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4 Metropolitan Statistical Areas
5 Metropolitan statistical areas have a more complex definition. Counties serve as the “building blocks” of
6 MSAs. In order to be designated an MSA, the region must have at least one UZA to serve as the core of
7 the MSA (2). The county that contains the UZA is called the “core county” of the MSA. Additional
8 “outlying counties” that have high degrees of economic or social integration with the core are added to
9 the MSA. Outlying counties qualify for inclusion in the MSA if a) more than 25% of the employed
10 residents commute to the core county; or b) more than 25% of the jobs in the outlying county are held by
11 residents of the core county (3). The boundary of an MSA is coterminous with the county boundaries that
12 qualify for inclusion. Therefore, it is common for land area that is rural in appearance and character to be
13 included in the MSA. Two MSAs can share a border. MSAs can become quite large in land area—the
14 Atlanta MSA currently encompasses 28 counties. Most, however, encompass only one county. In New
15 England, the term ‘New England City and Town Area’ (NECTA) is substituted for MSA because
16 townships are the predominant local government type in those states. Figure 2 shows the 362 existing
17 MSAs in the United States.
18 The Office of Management and Budget–which is a part of the Executive Office of the President–
19 is responsible for defining, creating, and modifying MSAs. The OMB issues annual updates to the list of
20 MSAs, but does not create new ones until after each Census (4).
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2 FIGURE 2 Map of Metropolitan Statistical Areas- 2000.
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4 MSA and UZA History
5 It is important to understand the history of how and when each geography was developed. The Seventh
6 Census (1850) was the first to allow regional administrators to delineate and collect data in geographies
7 smaller than the state level. This was the first data collection effort that laid the framework for
8 identifying urbanity, and data were amalgamated for some major municipalities and counties. The Ninth
9 Census in 1870 was the first to identify urbanized areas as distinct units free from political boundaries.
10 Over the next century, collection techniques were repeatedly improved upon, and definitions have
11 changed. Although the Census Bureau has reported “urbanized areas” for over 150 years, it has used the
12 modern definition since the Sixteenth Census in 1940 (5).
13 The concept of a metropolitan statistical area was first defined by the Office of Management and
14 Budget (OMB) in 1951 and has been modified six times since, most recently in 2003. The MSA took
15 almost two decades to reach its modern definition, and did not gain wide acceptance until the 1980s (6).
16 MPOs were created by the 1973 Federal Aid Highway Act. In 1973, the MSA was not a well-
17 recognized or well-developed concept. The UZA, however, had been in common use for many decades.
18 The authors of the legislation designed MPOs to be situated around the only geographical representation
19 of urbanity available at that time—the UZA. Today, we have both the UZA and the MSA to choose from.
20 In order to visualize the difference between MSAs and UZAs, Figure 3 overlays the MSAs in
21 Florida with the UZAs in the state. Each MSA is shown with a different color, but the UZAs are shown
22 in uniform yellow.
6. Alexander Bond 6
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2 FIGURE 3 MSAs and UZAs in Florida- 2008.
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5 Metropolitan Planning Organizations
6 A Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is a regional transportation infrastructure planning agency.
7 The Federal government requires MPOs to perform transportation planning in all areas with more than
8 50,000 people. Agency operations and policy are directed by a board of local elected and appointed
9 officials.
10 MPOs were first mentioned in the 1962 Federal Aid Highway Act, but were not constituted as
11 official agencies until the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1973. The contemporary MPO planning process
12 and organizational structure was put in place by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act (ISTEA) in
13 1991. MPOs were established in response to an outcry from local governments about of the lack of a
14 local voice in the route choices of major Federal-aid freeways, such as the Interstate Highway System (7).
15 The chief purpose of the MPO is to plan and program transportation improvements. The process is
16 founded on a metropolitan transportation plan, which must look at least 20 years into the future. The
17 projects identified by the MPO in the metropolitan transportation plan usually do not have a construction
18 timeframe, and act more as a pool of approved projects to be built over the next 20-plus years. The MPO
19 selects projects from the metropolitan transportation plan for inclusion in a four- to five-year
20 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). The TIP sets a timetable for construction. The projects in
7. Alexander Bond 7
1 the MPO Transportation Improvement Program must be included in the State Transportation
2 Improvement Program (STIP). A project’s presence in the STIP enables contracts to be issued for actual
3 construction.
4 Over time, the role of MPOs has expanded to include important issues like protection of civil
5 rights, preservation of cultural resources, safety controls, proactive enforcement of the National
6 Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), and control of air pollution under the Clean Air Act. Failure to
7 establish an MPO or execute the prescribed planning program will result in a withholding of Federal
8 highway and transit dollars for that region (8).
9 The wide variety of MPO organizational structures and boundaries presents substantial
10 difficulties when attempting to improve or standardize the MPO planning and programming process. The
11 Federal government, research institutions, and contractors are unable to craft “one-size fits all” tools,
12 software, and planning approaches because MPOs are all so different from each other. Further, MPOs
13 will have difficulty adjusting to new duties (such as greenhouse gas reduction) if MPOs are not made to
14 more closely resemble each other.
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16 MPO Designation
17 The process of establishing an MPO is called “designation.” Every ten years, the Census Bureau issues a
18 list of UZAs. All of the land area inside a UZA must be covered by an MPO. The MPOs in each state are
19 designated by agreement between the governor of the state and local governments representing 75% of
20 the population in the MPO area, including the largest municipality. The MPO planning boundary is
21 expected to cover land that is forecast to become urbanized over the next twenty years. A single MPO
22 can cross state lines. In fact, about 14% of all MPOs operating today are multi-state (9). Once
23 designated, the MPO does not need the Governor’s approval to expand its boundary unless a new UZA is
24 created outside the planning area.
25 Federal law does not describe the organizational composition of an MPO. Nor does it prescribe the
26 way MPOs are organized to cover the UZAs in the state. Over the decades, a wide variety of MPO
27 boundaries have been established. Little research exists on the optimal MPO configuration. Figure 4
28 illustrates three of the many conditions allowable under current law. Maps are courtesy of the Florida
29 MPO Advisory Council:
30 • A common type of MPO boundary can be seen in the map of the Gainesville (FL) MTPO, which
31 is map B in Figure 3. A small portion of land area outside the UZA is included in the MPO planning
32 boundary. This is land expected to become urbanized in the next twenty years.
33 • A single MPO can cover more than one UZA, as demonstrated in map A. In this case, the
34 Volusia (FL) MPO covers the entirety of both the Deltona UZA and the Daytona Beach-Port Orange
35 UZA.
36 • A single UZA may be covered by more than one MPO, as shown in map C. The Broward (FL)
37 MPO covers only part of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach UZA. The rest of the UZA is
38 covered by two other MPOs (Miami-Dade MPO and Palm Beach MPO), because all land area in a UZA
39 must be inside an MPO planning area.
8. Alexander Bond 8
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2 FIGURE 4 Example MPO boundary maps.
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4 ANALYSIS
5 The past several decades have seen a significant expansion of cities, rapid suburbanization, new planning
6 requirements on MPOs, and new ideas about the practice of transportation planning. All of these
7 developments make the MSA a more logical basis for MPO designation. Below are several arguments in
8 favor of MPO designation under the MSA standard.
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10 Coterminous with Local and Regional Governments
11 UZAs bear no relation to the boundaries of local government. MSAs by definition must end at county
12 borders. Being coterminous with the boundaries of local governments provides MSAs with certain
13 advantages over UZAs as MPO boundaries.
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15 Uniform Data
16 One of the most compelling arguments in favor of an MSA standard is the synchronization and
17 compatibility of datasets and information standards. The MSA is the most commonly used geography for
18 government data collection and distribution of grants from government programs. A 2004 Government
19 Accountability Office (15) study of thirty-five major Federal funding programs intended to assist cities
20 used formulas based on MSAs. None used UZAs in their formulae. The MSA is used to amalgamate and
21 publish statistics from the Departments of Commerce, Education, Labor, Justice, Transportation,
22 Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development. The UZA is only used for a narrow set of data produced
23 by the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and the Census Bureau. Under
24 an MSA standard, most of the data produced by the government and private sector will automatically
9. Alexander Bond 9
1 match the MPO’s planning area, facilitating quick and simple calculations during the planning process.
2 Currently, MPOs must expend considerable effort to break down data into the correct geography.
3 Travel demand models depend heavily on data. Since 1973 creation of MPOs, engineers and
4 planners have developed and refined a number of tools to predict future demand on the transportation
5 system. These complex systems often have to look well beyond the UZA in order to forecast
6 transportation demand. For example, the model needs to predict inter-regional trips, which requires
7 volume input for roadways that lie far beyond the UZA boundary. An MSA-sized MPO would do a
8 better job of supporting travel demand modeling because more lane miles that are not “urban” would
9 automatically be included in the planning area, and thus, the urban travel demand model.
10 Beyond travel demand modeling, transportation planning in general is better served with a MSA-
11 sized MPO. The MPO can take a stronger position in transit visioning, since the planning area would
12 cover urban, rural, on-demand, and regional transit system service areas. The MPO would also be in a
13 more powerful position to influence growth management if the planning area boundary was larger.
14 Finally, Federal transportation planning money could be leveraged into improved transportation planning
15 at the local level.
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17 Land Use Coordination and Growth Management
18 It is generally accepted planning practice that land use and transportation need to be better integrated (10).
19 Further, growth management efforts are significantly strengthened if transportation infrastructure is used
20 as a growth management tool to combat urban sprawl (11). In most states, land use is the sole
21 responsibility of local governments. MPOs are not authorized to govern land use. Since the MPO
22 planning area is not required to match a local or regional land use planning area, integrating transportation
23 and land use can be a difficult exercise. By using an MSA designation standard, the MPO would produce
24 a transportation plan for an entire county or group of counties. The information from the MPO plan could
25 be directly incorporated into each county’s land use plan. Through an iterative process over several plan
26 cycles, land use and transportation would become more closely integrated.
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28 Political Constituencies
29 If MPO boundaries are coterminous with local government boundaries, then the constituencies of MPO
30 board members would lie entirely within the MPO area. Figure 5 demonstrates an example of this
31 situation using the county commission districts of Escambia County, FL (Pensacola). The approximate
32 MPO boundary line is shown bisecting District 5. A small area of District 5 lies inside the MPO, but it
33 also covers a vast non-MPO area in the northern part of the county. The commissioner serving this
34 district has many constituents who do not live in the MPO area, and may not live in the MPO area
35 himself. This can create a conflict of interest for that official. If the MPO extended to the county
36 boundary–as would be the case under an MSA standard—the Commissioner of District 5 will represent
37 all of his constituents on the MPO board.
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10. Alexander Bond 10
Approximate MPO
Boundary
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2 FIGURE 5 County commission districts of Escambia County, FL.
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4 Councils of Government
5 In 1959, President Eisenhower established the Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR),
6 which oversaw the transition of traditional state-based programs toward program implementation at the
7 regional level. The most lasting result of ACIR’s effort was the establishment of Councils of Government
8 (COGs), which have a variety of names like Associations of Government, Regional Councils, or Planning
9 and Development Commissions. The 500-plus COGs operating today have become a standard component
10 of government all across the United States (12). Many COGs administer programs that must be treated
11 regionally, such as affordable housing, environmental protection, emergency management, or local
12 transportation like recreational trails and paratransit. Some COGs also function as MPOs. Many, if not
13 most, are organized around regions that closely resemble MSAs.
14 If MPOs were designated around MSAs, their boundaries would be more similar to COGs. Major
15 advantages of having a similar boundary include data sharing, intergovernmental coordination, and the
16 introduction of non-transportation information into the MPO process. Some programs commonly
17 administered by COGs could help inform and influence the transportation planning process, such as
18 housing, water quality, and emergency preparedness. The COG should not be forced to become the
19 MPO, nor should MPOs be incentivized to become hosted by the COG. Such decisions can only be made
20 through intergovernmental political decision-making in each region. COGs and MPOs do not need to
21 merge in order to get these benefits—they just need similar borders so that information can flow freely.
22
23 Air Quality Conformity
24 A regulatory and funding system known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) were
25 established by the Clean Air Act of 1990. Governors are required under 45 USC 7407 (D)4(a)iv to
26 submit to the Environmental Protection Agency a list of regions that do not meet ozone, carbon monoxide
27 and particulate matter standards of air quality. The default size of a nonattainment area is a metropolitan
11. Alexander Bond 11
1 statistical area. However, the governor is able to alter that boundary by documenting his reasons to the
2 EPA (14). From this section of law, it is clear that Congress intended for air quality to be measured and
3 solutions administered at the MSA level. However, much transportation planning is required to take
4 place at the much smaller UZA scale.
5 Congress charged MPOs with developing transportation solutions to combat poor air quality.
6 Beginning with ISTEA, and continued in TEA-21 and SAFETEA-LU, the Congestion Mitigation and Air
7 Quality (CMAQ) program has provided transportation funding for regions that are in NAAQS non-
8 attainment or maintenance status. MPOs are the agency in charge of the planning and programming of
9 about $1.7 billion per year in CMAQ money. As of July 2009, fifty-five air quality regions are in
10 nonattainment for ozone standards, and thirty-seven for particulate matter standards. Further, standards
11 for ozone will tighten with the implementation of new rules by the end of 2011, causing more regions to
12 fall into nonattainment. Air quality is a serious problem, and transportation planning is a big part of the
13 solution. However, there is often a mismatch between an MPO planning area arranged around a UZA and
14 the air quality airshed identified by MSA. This can complicate the integration of regional transportation
15 planning and air quality planning, particularly in locales that only recently were found to be in
16 nonattainment.
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18 Fewer MPOs, Better Coverage
19 Some have criticized the large number of MPOs in existence, and doubt the ability of smaller MPOs to
20 fully perform the tasks required by Federal law (15). Using MSAs as the standard, more of the US
21 population would be included in an MPO area, while simultaneously limiting the total number of MPOs.
22 See table 1 for a summary of the UZAs and MSAs from the 2000 Census. There are 484 UZAs in the
23 country, which have been organized into 385 MPOs. UZAs cover approximately 63% of the population.
24 Meanwhile, 362 MSAs cover 80% of the American public.
25 It is unknown how many MPOs would be organized from among the MSAs, but the number
26 would certainly be fewer than are found today. Because MSAs include entire counties, there are
27 opportunities for only one MPO to be formed where there are currently two or more. For example, the
28 borders of the four-county Orlando-Kissimmee MSA currently have two MPOs operating in it
29 (METROPLAN Orlando and Lake-Sumter MPO). Under the MSA standard, the entire MSA would
30 function as only one MPO. This assumes that new regulations would require only one MPO per MSA.
31
32 TABLE 1 Number and Population in MSAs and UZAs
Geography Type Number Percent US
Population
Urbanized Area 484 63%
Metropolitan 362 80%
Statistical Area
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34 Current Trends in MPO Boundary Expansion
35 A change in Federal law is not needed for individual MPOs to reap the benefits of expanding the MPO
36 boundary. It is important for MPO leadership to understand that current law allows nearly complete
37 freedom in setting the agency’s planning area. The boundaries of an MPO can be expanded at any time if
38 local governments in the area agree to the change. A more formal process of re-designation can take
39 place after each Census. Therefore, MPOs already have the capability of matching their planning area
40 boundary to the edge of the MSA, and all of the advantages discussed in this paper can be achieved by
41 taking that action.
42 Many MPOs have already expanded well beyond the required area. Twenty-seven percent of
43 MPOs in the US have more than one UZA in their planning area. More than 42% encompass more than
44 one county (9). Larger MPO planning areas suggest that the intergovernmental political process in that
45 region has concluded that the area functions as a single transportation region and should have a single
46 MPO. Clearly, many regional already see a benefit in an expanded planning area.
12. Alexander Bond 12
1 Figure 6 shows the planning area boundaries of MPOs currently operating in the United States. A
2 visual inspection of the map reveals that MPO boundaries are much larger than the UZA, and also extend
3 beyond the expected 20-year growth boundary. The size and shape of MPO boundaries have more in
4 common with MSAs than UZAs. This is particularly true in Florida, California, Pennsylvania, the great
5 lakes region, and the northeast corridor. When the two maps are compared, it is clear that MPO
6 boundaries already are more similar to MSAs than UZAs.
7
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9 FIGURE 6 A comparison of MSA and MPO boundaries.
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11 One reason some MPOs extend their planning area is to match the boundary of their host agency.
12 Some MPOs forge hosting partnerships with other agencies because of information gathering, cost
13 savings, or political advantages. According to a recent study, approximately 68% of MPOs were hosted
14 by another agency. The most common hosting relationship is with Councils of Government or similar
15 regional general-purpose government agencies. Approximately 24% of all MPOs in the United States are
16 hosted at a COG. Another 16.5% of MPOs are hosted by a County Government (9).
13. Alexander Bond 13
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2 MODIFICATIONS TO THE MSA
3 MSAs are by definition quite large. Most include stretches of land that is rural in character, and this is
4 one of the major drawbacks of using the MSA standard. Fortunately, there are at least two modifications
5 to the MSA standard that would help alleviate this problem.
6 The first policy alternative is to use only “core” MSA counties. When the Office of Management
7 and Budget assembles an MSA, it begins with a core county (or sometimes counties), which is the county
8 that has 50,000 or more people and a dense core. Then additional counties are added. MPOs could be
9 required to cover only the core county, while making outlying counties optional. This system would
10 allow rural outlying counties to be omitted from the MPO planning area. For example, the Gainesville
11 MSA’s core county is Alachua County, FL (pop. 217,000). The MSA also includes rural Gilchrist
12 County (pop. 14,437) as an “outlying” county because more than 25% of the residents work in Alachua
13 County. Under this policy alternative, only Alachua County would be required to be in the MPO, while
14 Gilchrist County would be optional.
15 There are some single-county MSAs that would have broad stretches of rural land area. Some
16 counties are exceptionally large in land area, particularly in mountain west states. Since MSAs are
17 coterminous with counties, these very large counties could turn into very large MPOs. An alternative
18 could be for the MPO to “opt out” Census tracts that have a very low population density. In order to opt
19 out, the MPO would need to go through some sort of approval process to prove the administrative
20 purpose for excluding land area. For example, the Flagstaff MSA (pop. 127,000) is comprised only of
21 Coconino County, Arizona. But Coconino County’s land area of 18,661 square miles makes it larger than
22 nine US states. This is an extremely large area to effectively maintain an MPO planning process. Wide
23 portions of Coconino County are desert with a population density below 10 people per square mile.
24 Under this alternative, the Flagstaff MPO could apply to the USDOT to exclude from its planning area all
25 census tracts with a population density below 10 people per square mile. The application process would
26 need to be laid out specifically in regulation.
27
28 CONCLUSION
29 It is very important for MPO designation to be based on a third-party definition. Initial
30 designation of an MPO can be a contentious issue that encroaches on the traditional areas of responsibility
31 of several groups. State Departments of Transportation lose considerable project selection authority, and
32 the balance between municipalities and the county can be upended. Having a neutral third party
33 determine the boundary is a simple way to ensure that the legislative intent of MPO creation is met. Since
34 the establishment of MPOs, the neutral party has been the Census Bureau drawing the UZA. An MSA
35 drawn by the Office of Management and Budget also fits the definition. Both are neutral third parties and
36 draw a district with a clearly defined geography.
37 MSAs offer several advantages over the UZA for MPO designation. They are, by definition,
38 coterminous with local government and regional governments, and match closely with air quality
39 conformity areas. Further, more of the United States is covered by an MPO while at the same time
40 limiting the number of agencies being operated. Many MPOs already possess planning areas that more
41 closely resemble MSAs than UZAs. The designation standard should be included in the successor
42 legislation to SAFETEA-LU and put into effect following the results of the OMB’s revised list of MSAs
43 based on the 2010 Census.
44 Establishing MPO planning areas by MSA could have powerful impacts on transportation
45 planning because of uniformity and standardization. After four decades of use, the time is right for an
46 honest reevaluation of the MPO and the scale of the metropolitan planning process. The MSA is a more
47 accurate representation of modern MPOs and metropolitan transportation planning, and it should be given
48 strong consideration as the basis for MPO boundary delineation.
14. Alexander Bond 14
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