01139005

Component

As construction costs increase and available funding decreases, local agencies are dealing with the reality of state Departments of Transportation being able to pay for fewer projects each year. As a result, municipalities are more frequently offering to pay for part of projects themselves. This is one solution to ensuring their priority projects are implemented while still utilizing available state and federal funds. One medium-sized community in North Carolina has taken a cooperative approach to partnering with the state in order to make the most of this funding situation. The City of Greenville in North Carolina (population 72,000) is currently studying a proposed project to connect east and west Greenville with a 1.2-mile road on new and existing location. Due to funding constraints in the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), the City has partnered with Pitt County Memorial Hospital and East Carolina University to pay for the planning and design of the road. NCDOT has contributed a nominal amount toward the planning process, and has agreed to pay for construction of the project. The City and the DOT have signed a Memorandum of Agreement to lay a foundation for this innovative project approach. In addition to defining each player’s role on the project, this agreement also identifies channels of communication, funding responsibilities, and desired outcomes for the project. This paper will show small and medium-sized communities examples of how the City of Greenville remained committed to improvements while dealing with the confines of limited public funding. The author will discuss the challenges of creating a partnership between state government, local government, and private organizations to achieve a large-scale transportation project. The role and responsibility of each partner, how consensus was built on design issues, and how a public involvement plan was developed that conformed to both state and local requirements are some of the topics covered in this paper. This paper will also discuss public-public partnerships undertaken by several other North Carolina communities to plan and construct large-scale transportation infrastructure projects

01138544

English

12p

2008

11th National Conference on Transportation Planning for Small and Medium-Sized Communities

CD-ROM

Capital costs; Construction projects; Cooperation; Costs; Financing; Local government; Public private partnerships; State government; Transportation planning

Greenville (North Carolina)

Administration and Management; Economics; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I10: Economics and Administration

TRIS, TRB

Aug 21 2009 2:38PM