Staff Responsibility: Stephen J. Andrle

The Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments (PPACG) is the designated metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Colorado Springs Urbanized Area. The region of over 600,000 people is noted for its traditionally conservative views, which influences transportation planning considerations—such as views on economic and environmental issues—as well as government funding.

The objective of this project was to pilot test Transportation for Communities—Advancing Projects through Partnerships (TCAPP) by using the TCAPP process in developing the Pikes Peak Regional Transportation Plan and integrating several tools to provide rigorous, defensible analyses. The project included both training from the Udall Institute on Environmental Conflict Resolution on collaboration and an independent assessment of TCAPP to evaluate how well it fits with other web-based collaboration tools and compares to technology in environmental conflict resolution/collaboration best practices.

During development of the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan, PPCAG followed the process outlined in TCAPP for long-range planning. This included developing a timeline for the team of participants that had all of the TCAPP steps embedded into the tasks. In addition, PPCAG developed a work plan that included each of the TCAPP steps to be tested. These documents were used throughout the planning process (by PPACG staff and consultants) to check that they were following each step documented in TCAPP, and that they used the timeline and work plan up until they started drafting the PPACG long-range plan itself. While TCAPP was not used consistently for each step by everyone involved in the planning process, it was used by the leads on the planning process. These people were familiar with the different aspects of the TCAPP process including the use of the Integrated Ecological Framework (IEF) that recommends landscape-scale decision making that considers conservation targets and goals alongside transportation targets and goals early in the planning process.

Status: This project is complete.

Product Availability: The final report, Assessment of Pikes Peak Area Council of Government’s Use of TCAPP in Developing a Long-Range Transportation Plan: Technical Evaluation, is available at https://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/169558.aspx.