MCDOT Update Jennifer Toth, Director Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Year in Review MCDOT had a very productive year last year and I appreciate the opportunity to come and share some of our successes with you today. This past year we graduated our first mentorship program class – many thanks to Teresa Welborn who has spearheaded this effort. We have collectively won five awards from WTS, the National Association of Counties and the APWA, as well as launching a new website and project information page. We also helped celebrate 20 years of transportation collaboration with the AZTech Regional Partnership, which brings together public and private agencies in an effort to create a seamless transportation system. Since July, MCDOT has completed the design process on nine projects totaling seven million dollars. Also since July, MCDOT has completed construction on 14 projects totaling roughly fifteen million worth of new improvements to county roads.

Road Information Tool MCDOT has also completed its new Road Information Tool. This interactive map provides information on roads maintained by MCDOT. The map contains layers that can be turned on and off by checking the box next to the layer. For example, the Street Network layer displays all roads. The County Maintained Roads layer shows only the roads maintained by MCDOT. Simply click on any road segment to open a pop-up box with data pertaining to that road segment. The selected segment will be highlighted on the map.   We are excited to be able to provide this new information tool to you. The expected launch date for the Road Information tool is February 14, which happens to be the launch date for Maricopa County’s new website.

New Maricopa County Website At last month’s meeting, MCDOT provided information regarding the County’s new website. The new website will serve as the one-stop shop for all Maricopa County services. If all continues to go according to plan, the new website will launch on Tuesday, February 14. MCDOT will be sending an email to all of its stakeholders with the updated links to help you navigate to all of the tools you need. Watch your email for more information.

Transportation Asset Management Last year, we also began developing a comprehensive transportation asset management plan. We recognize the importance of preserving the county’s infrastructure investment and have chosen to make that one of our long range planning goals. We hope to meet this goal by accomplishing two primary objectives: To preserve capacity through efficient traffic management and To manage and maintain infrastructure so that it meets or exceeds widely accepted industry standards. We are committed to managing our assets in a cost-effective and strategic way. Before we do this, however, we need to update our inventory and standardize our current information so that we could develop a better plan for the future. To do this we are conducting an assessment of our current processes and systems and aligning them with known best practices in Transportation Asset Management. In addition to completing our inventory and its current condition, we are setting performance targets and evaluating life cycle costs. Once our evaluations are complete, we will develop our financial plan and set our investment strategies to meet our goals. It is quite an undertaking and one that is absolutely vital for the future of our County and its communities.

Employee Engagement But roadways and bridges are not MCDOT’s only investment. One of our greatest investments is our employees. Studies show time and time again that employees will leave an organization if they are not engaged, challenged or if they do not make meaningful relationships at work. And employee turnover is both disruptive to progress and costly. Maricopa County is taking steps to keep its valuable employees. As part of this program, MCDOT administered an employee engagement survey last year and received an overall engagement score of 77 percent. This score represents the percentage of employees who are either highly engaged or engaged. This is an incredibly positive score and is considered to be high when compared to employers across the country. The average overall engagement score in the United States is 63 percent. MCDOT’s employees were most positive in the areas of providing Customer Service, receiving encouragement from supervisors and having the resources to do their job. However, our engagement scores showed that the greatest opportunity for improvement at MCDOT included: Keeping staff informed, Recognizing contributions and future Career potential. We took this feedback to heart and have begun to implement ways to improve Communication, Recognition and Career Advancement. To help us communicate better– We established the Roadway Reader, our employee monthly newsletter that highlights MCDOT employees, projects and activities. We created Connect MCDOT that organizes employee tours and events such as this one to give all employees an opportunity to meet and share ideas. We hold Lunch and Learn presentations every two weeks to introduce employees to new ideas and opportunities. We launched Main Street a new Intranet and SharePoint site to give all employees a one-stop shop for news and information and reformatted our Weekly Activities Report. We have created a Recognition Committee to develop an official program to recognize employees who go above and beyond. Our newsletter now features a kudos section where employees can request someone be recognized for doing an exceptional job. We also initiated a pilot Mentorship program and it has been quite a success! The first full-fledged program is underway. The mentors and mentees work together to set goals and to help the mentees prepare for the next phase of their career. MCDOT has also partnered with ASU to hold monthly classes that give employees an opportunity to learn and grow in the fields of transportation and leadership. I am proud to say that we have a great team at MCDOT and that our success is attributed to the work we do as a team.  

Transportation Systems Plan Another team accomplishment that is nearing its completion is our Transportation System Plan 2035 or TSP. The purpose of our TSP is to provide future guidance for roadway planning to meet the County’s needs. At the heart of the plan is our mission to provide transportation connections that improve Maricopa County residents’ lives. We used three horizon years – 2020, 2025 and 2035 – to plan for the future of Maricopa County’s transportation system.   To develop the plan, MCDOT conducted a thorough outreach effort to ensure that residents, local governments and stakeholders provided input to the plan. Our goal was to build relationships among Maricopa County’s communities and collaborate to provide projects that benefit all of our residents. Together, we will continue to pursue our goal of providing vital connectivity throughout the region. The Transportation System Plan 2035 identifies the budget needed to implement future projects. As part of the plan evaluation, MCDOT developed a prioritization process to help identify which projects satisfy the greatest public need. Projects that did not make it to the priority list will continue to be monitored to ensure the TSP meets the County’s transportation and safety needs as future projects and their budgets are considered. We anticipate the TSP to go before the Board for adoption in late Feb or March.

Along similar lines, MCDOT will soon be launching an outreach campaign to help develop its Active Transportation Plan or ATP. This plan will look at Maricopa County’s biking, walking and other alternate transportation facilities to determine need, connectivity and accessibility. The campaign will begin with the launching of our ATP webpage this spring and will include an interactive map to give everyone an opportunity to provide input regarding active transportation facilities. We plan to follow a very similar process to the one used to develop the Transportation Systems Plan. Once completed, the Active Transportation Plan will be incorporated into the Transportation System Plan for a comprehensive planning guide for the County’s transportation system network.

Transportation Improvement Program The results of both the Transportation Systems Plan and the Active Transportation Plan become reality when they are adopted into our TIP. Each year, shortly after the first of the fiscal year and once it has been approved and adopted by the Board of Supervisors, MCDOT publishes its TIP to its website. You can find it listed under the Projects tab, along side our interactive current project page.

FY 17 Budget Allocation - $100.3 Million For fiscal year 17, MCDOT realigned their TIP project classifications. We now categorize our projects into Capacity Enhancement projects, System Preservation and Reconstruction projects, (as we previously discussed with our asset management program), Transportation System Management projects which incorporates intelligent transportation systems, the MAG Arterial Life Cycle Program and our Dust Mitigation program. We have a budget of just over $100 million dollars for our TIP projects.

FY 18 -22 $552 Million Programmed Over the next five years, MCDOT anticipates approximately $552 million in TIP spending with the largest bin coming from the MAG ALCP projects. We also have approximately 13% of the program in the out years that is not programmed. This isn’t unusual as the closer years are more defined and the outer years can change.

“In the Pipeline” Northern Parkway $101 million Gilbert Road Bridge $59 million MC 85 107th Ave to 75th Ave $54 million Riggs Road $29 million Deer Valley Road $29 million Olive Avenue $26 million You can see the projects that are currently being designed which are mainly the large projects we have on the arterials. I’ll talk more about Northern Parkway in a few minutes.

“Filling the Pipeline” 32 Projects added to Program in FY2017 2 TSP 2035* 5 Studies (Planning & Traffic) 7 Partnerships with other Agencies* 2 Community Feedback 10 System Preservation (Pavement/Bridge Management) 7 Operational Improvement Projects 20 Recommended for Scoping or Traffic Study from TSP 2035 We have also identified 32 new projects that were added to the TIP in 2017. You can see the breakdown of projects in terms of why or how they were identified. We’ve identified 20 additional projects that we are recommending for scoping or studies. And we continue to monitor projects that were identified in the TSP to determine if they should be added to the TIP. For FY 18 we are proposing adding 36 projects to the program and we will be presenting the TIP to the Transportation Advisory Board on February 21. * One project has two sources

Northern Parkway One of the projects in the design pipeline is Northern Parkway. Design on the Northern Parkway Corridor has resumed and I wanted to update you. We are moving forward with the project as identified in the DCR as the interim project. However, I would like to highlight a few of the upcoming individual projects for you today. Dysart to 111th Avenue, is in final design. The project will include the two-lane frontage roads between Dysart and El Mirage Roads, as well as, the Agua Fria River bridge structure that will be wide enough to accommodate six-lanes.   Northern Avenue at Loop 101, will advertise late February. MCDOT will be seeking a design consultant to provide plans starting at a 30 percent level through the 100 percent Final Design stage, including required environmental updates and reports. Improvements on this project include upgrading the 99th Avenue intersection. This project will require the incorporation of ADOT design standards, as well as, extensive coordination with ADOT. The Dysart Overpass, will advertise for Final Design in March 2017. This project will include extending the Northern Parkway mainline which is four lanes (two-lanes each direction) about one half-mile east of Dysart Road. This makes the connection to the frontage roads that are being designed as part of Dysart to 111th Avenue. We will advertise in late spring for a scoping study for Northern between Loop 101 and Grand Ave. The DCR stated intersection improvements with no specifics, so we are doing preliminary engineering to determine the configuration of the roadway and intersections along this stretch. The last project for this year is the El Mirage Overpass which will advertise for Final Design in Fall 2017. This project will also construct the Northern Parkway mainline to the Agua Fria River bridge.

Thank you! MCDOT has had an incredible year. It is very rewarding to watch the progress our team has made over the past year and we have so much more to look forward to. Thank you again for providing me with the opportunity to share our progress with you.