WESTFIELD – Officials for the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail are seeking the public’s help in filling out a survey that will help prioritize how federal transportation funds will be spent in the coming years.
Distributed through the Pioneer Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) and conducted by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC), “Transportation Improvement Projects that are Important to You” is an online survey that can be completed in under five minutes, according to the MPO.
Friends of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail have been distributing the survey throughout the Westfield community via email, and are hoping to get as many responses as possible before the September 5 deadline.
“A total of $400 million in federal dollars is expected to be allocated to transportation improvement projects in the Pioneer Valley region over the next 20 years,” said the group in the email. “Responses to this survey will assist the MPO in developing a new way to evaluate future transportation improvement projects that will use federal funds.”
The survey lists several significant transportation focus areas – paving, congestion, bike lanes/sidewalks/bus stops, bridges, etc. – and asks Pioneer Valley residents to rank them in order of importance to them. It also asks participants to list the frequency with which they drive, carpool, bike, walk, or utilize public transportation.
“The Pioneer Planning Commission is looking forward to the input from the communities because it will help us allocate our transportation dollars more effectively,” said David Elvine, a senior planner with the PVPC, of the survey.
“This is an opportunity for people to weigh in and give feedback on what they see as projects that will greatly impact the region, what people see as being high priority projects,” said Jeffrey LaValley, chair of the Friends of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail’s Board of Directors. “Whether it has to do with bicycles and pedestrians, or whether it has to do with a major projects, like the (Interstate) 91 viaduct reconstruction.”
“It’s really just an opportunity for people to tell the state what they should be doing to improve transportation at the local level,” LaValley said, adding that the survey ‘fits in line with our mission.’ “We want to improve and promote alternative forms of transportation and reduce the burden on infrastructure.”
“The state is making an effort to take the idea of reducing the stress on infrastructure seriously, by creating alternative transportation, for pedestrians specifically,” said Joseph Giffune, vice chair of the Friends of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail’s Board of Directors. “A survey like this is something that helps them (the PVPC) guide the projects with constituent feedback.”
Giffune said that reducing the stress on the regional infrastructure is wholly important.
“I think it’s a good thing that we’re encouraging very simple projects, shorter trips within a community that don’t have you getting in your car,” he said. “From a state perspective, there have been edicts handed down, that projects have to not only ‘accommodate’ pedestrian transportation – now they have to ‘encourage’ (pedestrian transportation), so that’s a pretty big shift.”
“That happened last fall, and we’re starting to see that trickle into the bureaucracy that drives projects, and a survey such as this is the outcome of that,” Giffune said.
“We want to do anything we can to support the state soliciting feedback from it’s residents,” said LaValley. “This is for people to have a voice at the state level.”
The survey is available online at http://www.pvpc.org/content/survey-transportation-projects-are-important-you. Residents seeking a paper copy of the survey can call the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission at (413) 781-6045. Paper copies of the survey are available in Chinese, English, French, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
