Tool for rural and statewide multimodal transportation planning

The Georgia Department of Transportation's Multi-modal Transportation Planning Tool (MTPT) facilitates multimodal planning in rural areas. Using open databases that are available agencywide, the tool can aid in the analysis of transportation requirements of rural areas, identify potential implementation constraints early in the planning process, and develop a prioritized project list by mode for an analysis region. The MTPT addresses highways, transit, intercity bus, commuter and passenger rail, aviation, and bicycles. An integrated geographic information system plays an important role in the presentation of the results. This paper discusses the development of the MTPT and describes program functionality. The paper will be of particular interest to state transportation agencies interested in using statewide databases for multimodal planning purposes. Described techniques identify how data that are typically collected and maintained for an entire state (e.g., traffic volumes, posted speeds, designated bike routes, roadway functional classes, crash information, and county-based socio-economic data) can be combined with field verified default factors, widely accepted planning and analysis methods, and additional regionally calibrated planning algorithms to perform system-level planning at the city, county, multicounty, or state levels.