The Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) identifies hundreds of capacity improvement projects that will be needed over the next 20 to 30 years to meet the community’s goals for mobility, congestion, and air quality. RTC targets the Road Impact Fee revenues towards the Congestion Relief Program. Additionally, State and Federal funding may also be targeted to congestion relief. Funding is not available to construct all of these projects at one time. A capacity project priority setting process has been developed by the RTC in collaboration with the City of Reno, City of Sparks, and Washoe County. The process assures that available funding is spent on building projects having the greatest benefit for the community at the time they are needed, that is, building the right project at the right time.
The steps of the process are summarized as follows:
- Time stratification of road segment projects through the RTP process.
- Benefit-cost analysis to determine an initial priority ranking.
- Consideration of “other factors” to develop final priority recommendations.
- Assignment of projects to their “best fit” funding categories.
- A Technical Advisory Committee review and recommendation.
- Presentation and recommendation to the RTC Board for consideration.