MPO staff propose TIP evaluation changes: more weight for safety and equity, lower cost weighting

Cape Cod Commission staff presented draft revisions to the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) evaluation criteria that would shift scoring to prioritize safety and equity, incorporate climate and low-lying roads analysis, and downweight project cost.

Colleen Medeiros, Transportation Program Manager for the Cape Cod Commission, said the revised criteria would formally add a safe-systems approach under safety objectives and introduce an equity/environmental-justice factor under policy support. The draft also references the region’s new climate action plan and a low-lying roads assessment so those considerations appear in scoring. A notable numeric change proposed in staff’s draft is reducing the cost category from 15 points to 5 points, following Joint Transportation Committee (JTC) recommendations that cost is already accounted for during programming and should not dominate TIP evaluation scores.

Medeiros said staff will provide a more detailed point breakdown and scoring examples at the next Joint Transportation Committee and MPO meetings, and that staff performs the evaluation annually to reflect project changes over time. MPO members raised questions about how community support and public engagement are scored; staff said the community-support measure generally credits projects identified in local plans or having municipal support and that negative points are possible for documented opposition.

MPO members expressed support for emphasizing safety. Gary Gallagher said he fully supported the shift toward safety and noted that overlays for environmental justice areas had already been used in past TIPs. Derek Schuster asked whether scores persist or are updated; Medeiros confirmed scores are reviewed each year as projects advance through design and funding phases.

The MPO will receive a detailed scoring breakdown and may consider formal endorsement of the revised criteria at an upcoming meeting.