Planners outline work for year

SPRINGDALE — A committee has recommended approving the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission’s 2021 Unified Development Work Program, which sets out activities the organization will undertake during the fiscal year beginning July 1.

“Probably the biggest task for the first half of the next fiscal year is completion of our 2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan update,” said Tim Conklin, assistant director at Regional Planning said Thursday. “It is required to be updated in the first quarter of 2021.”

Conklin said planners have been meeting with the major cities to look at travel demand, future population and employment in the region.

“I think everybody’s aware that our population is forecast to approach 1 million population by 2045, so it’s a big task to try to allocate that across

the region in terms of the cities,” Conklin said.

Any projects requiring federal money must be part of the plan, he said.

Regional Planning will also partner this year with the Arkansas Department of Transportation to update statewide transportation plans. Also, the region’s congestion management process report will look at what measures have been taken to reduce congestion in the urban planning area.

The Unified Development plan is presented to transportation departments in both Arkansas and Missouri.

“Basically, it sets out the major tasks that we will be working on throughout the fiscal year,” Conklin said. “To remind everybody, our planning area boundary includes all of Benton and Washington County and a small portion of McDonald County up to Pineville, Mo.”

The commission’s major tasks are administration and support of programs and money, general development, comprehensive planning, short and long-range transportation planning and the region’s Transportation Improvement Program.

The goals are to create a transportation network tha’s safe, reliable and reduces congestion, improves ease of movement and supports economic development.

The Technical Advisory Committee, meeting for the first time since January via an online meeting, agreed Thursday to send the plan to the regional planning’s Policy Committee for final this week.