ROCOG Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) 2023-2026

The Rochester-Olmsted Council of Governments (ROCOG) is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the City of Rochester and Olmsted County. ROCOG's primary responsibility is to undertake transportation planning studies that address important regional travel issues and needs across highway, transit, freight and active transportation (walking and bicycling) modes for the Metropolitan Planning Area (MPA) illustrated in Figure 1.

As an MPO, federal legislation requires ROCOG to annually prepare a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) that identifies all proposed transportation projects in the ROCOG area that will be supported in whole or in part with federal funding over the next four years. Preparation of the TIP represents a collaborative effort involving state and local road authorities, transit providers and local units of government. The TIP reflects how the various jurisdictions and agencies within the ROCOG MPA have prioritized their use of limited Federal highway and transit funding.

ROCOG is organized as a joint powers board with a membership composed of Olmsted County, all of the incorporated cities within Olmsted County (including Pine Island and Chatfield), townships and the primary school districts serving residents of Olmsted County.

ROCOG is overseen by Policy Board that is the MPO's decision making body and is composed of 16 members including:

• 5 members from the City of Rochester (Mayor and four Councilmembers)
• 3 members from the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners
• 3 members representing the interests of small cities in Olmsted County (Byron, Chatfield, Dover, Eyota, Oronoco, Pine Island, and Stewartville)
• 2 members representing the interests of the 18 Townships in Olmsted County (Cascade, Dover, Elmira, Eyota, Farmington, Haverhill, High Forest, Kalmer, Marion, New Haven, Orion, Oronoco, Pleasant Grove, Quincy, Rochester, Rock Dell, Salem, and Viola)
• 2 individuals from the general public who serve as at-large members
• 1 member representing Rochester Independent School District 535

The core of the TIP is the four-year list of transportation projects scheduled to receive federal and/or state funding in the ROCOG MPA, as well as any additional projects deemed “regionally significant” though funded with federal dollars. Projects can include work on major highways or local arterial roads, transit services, as well as funding pedestrian/bicycle paths and trails that provide access to important community destinations. Project information in the TIP is provided inmaps and tables, broken down by funding year, that depict the location of the projects and details about their costs and sources of funds.

The next section of this website presents an interactive map and comment form that allows users to see where projects are planned, to access additional information about projects, and to submit comments or questions about individual projects. Staff of ROCOG will respond to questions received within a week, and all comments and questions / responses are shared with the ROCOG Policy Board who is responsible for approving the final TIP document.

Note that some projects that receive federal funding are not depicted on the map of projects, as they do not involve construction or acquisition of physical features such as roads or structures; examples of projects not mapped are bus puchases or funding for operation of transit services.

ROCOG is required to annually adopt an TIP document following a period for public comment and review. The following schedule highlights key aspects of the TIP adoption process.

The 30 day public comment period provides the public an opportunity to comment on the TIP document and projects proposed for implementation in the 2023-2026 time period.

In addition to submitting comments through this website via the interactive map and survey found below, other avenues through which comments may be provided include:

• Attending and offering comments at the upcoming August 24th and September 28th meetings of the ROCOG Policy Board.
  • Meetings are held at 2122 Campus Drive SE on the east side of Rochester at 12:00 Noon. Individuals may also participate in these meetings online via web links available on the Olmsted County Meetings portal at  Search - PrimeGov Portal 
  • In-person and virtual TIP public information meetings that will be conducted during the Pubic Comment period as indicated in the timeline above
• Comments may be submitted through the general ROCOG website at  planningweb@olmstedcounty.gov  
• Comments may be submitted through the ROCOG Facebook page at  Rochester-Olmsted Council of Governments | Facebook 
• You may call ROCOG at  507-328-7100  

The complete Draft 2023-2026 ROCOG Transportation Improvement Program document can be accessed online by clicking on the following link:

• Figure 2 is an interactive map that highlights the location of planned projects within the ROCOG Planning Area that have been awarded federal funding for the years 2023-2026. FOR BEST VIEWING CLICK ON THE EXPAND BUTTON IN THE UPPER RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THE IMAGE WINDOW BELOW AND THEN USE THE ZOOM IN / ZOOM OUT BUTTONS IN LOWER RIGHT HAND CORNER TO ENLARGE THE MAP TO SEE PROJECT LOCATIONS IN GREATER DETAIL. You can exit the image window by CLICKING the EXPAND button a 2nd time.
• Click on a highlighted line or marker to see basic information about the project. This works best when you have the map in EXPANDED MODE as described above.
• Use the the survey form below the map if you wish to offer any comments on a proposed project. Instructions on using the survey form are provided.

Tables 1A through 1D provides a summary of all projects that are slated to receive federal funding during the years 2023 to 2026. This list includes not only the highway related projects illustrated in the above interactive map but addition federally funded projects such as support for annual operating costs for transit services, planned bus purchases, and technology improvements such as traffic management hardware and software. The list is broken down by mode (Transit / Highway Construction / Active Transportation) and Year, and Table 1D provides a summary of Advanced Construction paybacks, which occurs when construction work is advanced into an earlier construction season with a portion of the federal projects being paid out to the state or local unit of government in a later federal fiscal year.

In addition to containing a wealth of information about transportation projects planned to be constructed or implemented in the next four years, the TIP is also required to respond to a number of federal reporting requirements regarding past performance relative to implementation of past projects, how well major highway and public transit systems in the ROCOG area are operating, and whether the proposed projects in this TIP will potentially impact concentrated low income or minority populations. The following sections summarize our findings related to these three areas of federal concern.

The U.S Department of Transportation at the direction of Congress requires that a report be included in the TIP that demonstrates progress made in implementing the projects that were programmed for 2022 in last year's Transportation Improvement Program. The following table provides an update on the status of those projects.

Performance measurement was introduced by the U.S. Department of Transportation for State Department's of Transportation and MPO's with the 2012 reauthorization of the federal transportatin law known as MAP-21. MAP-21 directed the FHWA and the FTA to develop performance measures to assess a range of factors, focused on system-wide safety as well as the structural condition and traffic flow reliability on the National Highway System (NHS) , which is composed of the Interstate Highways and major regional highways such as TH 52, TH 63 and TH 14.

The 2016 federal FAST Act included requirements for state DOTs and MPOs to establish measurable targets for various performance measures to allow agencies to easily track and report progress. MPO's can choose to simply adopt the state DOT performance measures, which ROCOG has chosen to do. Highway related performance measures that have been established fall into the following groups:

• Performance Measure Group 1 – Transportation Safety
• Performance Measure Group 2 - NHS Pavement and Bridge Condition on the Interstate and National Highway System
• Performance Measure Group 3– NHS System Reliability

The following set of charts highlight performance results for the years 2017-2021 for the various highway related measures. Three numbers are reported in each chart:

• Annual results (in the orange column)
• The average annual result for the prior five years (the blue number in the box)
• The Performance Target or Goal for a given year, which is measured against the five year average (the underlined number in black).

ROCOG has committed to work with MnDOT to plan and program projects that contribute to achievement of the established performance targets.

NOTE: Scroll through the Performance results below using the right or left arrow keys

In addition, transit operating agencies such as Rochester Public Transit are also required to establish performance measures

• Transit Asset Management (TAM)
• Public Transportation Agency Safety Plans (PTASP).

For more information, please   visit the draft TIP on ROCOG's website   (rocogmn.org).

Every federal agency must incorporate environmental justice in its mission by analyzing and addressing the effects of programs, policies, and activities on minority and low income populations. Drawing from the framework established by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has set forth the following three principles to ensure non-discrimination in its federally funded activities:

• Avoid, minimize, or mitigate disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects, including social and economic effects, on minority and low income populations.

• Ensure the full and fair participation by all potentially affected communities in the transportation decision-making process.

• Prevent the denial of, reduction in, or significant delay in the receipt of benefits by minority and low income populations.

The Environmental Justice public policy goal is to ensure that negative impacts resulting from government activities do not fall disproportionately on minority or low income populations. While it is difficult to make significant improvements to transportation systems without causing impacts of one form or another, the concern is whether proposed projects negatively affect the health or environments of minority or low income populations more intensely than other populations.

The TIP project list contains several projects which represent infrastructure investment in areas where minority and low income populations represent a higher percentage of the population than they do across the entire ROCOG Planning Area. As with any construction project, these will necessarily cause disruption, delays, detours, noise, dust, and inconvenience for residents nearby. However, these adverse impacts are expected to be outweighed by the benefits that accrue to the neighboring areas, such as increased safety, better connections, improved access, new or improved pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, or improved access to transit service.

While implementing agencies such as the MnDOT or the City of Rochester have the responsibility to address adverse impacts from projects during project development, avoid them where possible, and mitigate those that cannot be avoided, ROCOG is required to as part of the TIP to identify projects which may have impactin areas where the percentage of minority or low income individuals their respective areawide share of the population. The areawide thresholds are 20.9% for minority populations and 8.0% for low income individuals. Figures 4 and 5 below identify those projects which are located in areas where the percentage of minority and/or low income individuals exceeds the areawide average and thus may be at risk of being disproportionately affected by a project.

Figure 4: TIP Projects with potential to impact low income or minority populations in Rochester Urban Area

Figure 5: TIP Projects with Potential to impact low income or minority populations in Greater Olmsted County Area

As the federally designated MPO for the metropolitan area, ROCOG must demonstrate fiscal constraint when programming funding for projects in the TIP. Under 23 CFR § 450.326(j), the MPO is required to include a financial plan for the projects being programmed in the TIP, as well as demonstrate the ability of its partner jurisdictions to fund these projects while continuing to also fund the necessary operations and maintenance of the existing transportation system. To comply with these requirements, ROCOG has examined past trends regarding federal, state, and local revenue sources for transportation projects in the area to determine what levels of revenue can be reasonably expected over the TIP cycle. The resulting revenue estimates were then compared with the cost of the projects in the TIP, which are adjusted for inflation to represent estimated year-of-expenditure costs. Based on this analysis, ROCOG has determined the MnDOT, Olmsted County and Rochester have the financial capability to fund the local share of costs associated with projects in the TIP while continuing to fund basic maintenance and operations of the existing system. For more information on Fiscal Constraint, please see Part 5 of the draft 2023-2026 TIP available at  Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) | Olmsted County, MN