Mock Web Site Home Page 

Note: this web site was completed in 2000 as a research project. Items and persons referenced by it may have changed since that time.

Welcome to the Mock Web Site for the MidRiver Metropolitan Planning Organization.  This site was developed by the staff at the Urban Affairs Center at the University of Toledo as a research tool connected with the report "Getting On Track", written for the Center for Community Change on the issue of Transportation Equity.

That report analyses the availability of information from local Metropolitan Planning Organizations and how that affects the ability of local stakeholders to participate in the transportation planning process.  In essence, the report contributes to the efficient, responsive, and equitable distribution of federal transportation monies.

In May 1998 Congress passed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21^st Century (TEA-21), which authorized the federal government to spend approximately $217 billion for transportation projects over the next six years. Congress included several amendments to the Act. One guaranteed an active role for community groups in the certification process of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs); another required consultation with mass transit users in the transportation planning process; and a third required MPOs to disclose annually what projects have received federal funds. A goal underlying these amendments was to assure an appropriate distribution of federal monies, which includes projects seeking to improve the quality of life in low-income, minority, and urban and rural communities.  The Department of Transportation was assigned to make rules specifying the technical and procedural guidelines MPOs must meet to satisfy these requirements.

The Center for Community Change and the Transportation Equity Network approached The University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center (UAC) for assistance. The UAC was asked to develop and undertake a research project to:

• Determine the availability of information and data from MPO’s regarding their funded transportation projects
• Ascertain the breadth of data available from various MPOs around the country
• Determine the formats of available data and materials
• Deduce and identify omissions in the data
• Identify the “best practices” of MPOs. 

These actions would be the groundwork in formulating a series of policy recommendations enabling the DOT to effectively meet the spirit and goals of the public participation and disclosure amendments to TEA-21. In so doing, the UAC and the CCC have sought to provide information useful to the DOT in writing regulations and informing TEN and its local and congressional allies as they prepare to comment on the proposed DOT regulations.

Based on the results of the surveys performed by the Urban Affairs Center, it was determined that a mock web site should be developed.  This mock site would help evaluate possible difficulties involved in setting up a good site and to identify some innovations that are made possible by use of the Internet.

The web site for our imaginary MPO, the Mid-River Metropolitan Planning Organization (MRMPO), is intended to highlight methods for delivering information in widely available, uniform, useful, and affordable formats.  The navigation of the site is a very simple hierarchy, similar in format to the standard “Explorer” program used in most computers and similar to many of the Best Practices already discussed.

This is only a test exercise.  There is no MPO transportation planning information to impart on these pages but it functions, rather, as a template for other possible sites.  Instead, we use this site to impart information on the research project itself as a way of demonstrating the use of web-based information distribution.

Further, as mentioned earlier, this site was developed by Urban Affairs Center staff - people with expertise in research on political and social sciences - NOT computer or web site experts.  Developing a web site in order to distribute this information need not be onerous for MPOs and is not a difficult task.

The categories used on the home page in the mock site really answer the basic questions - who, what, when, where, and how - that MPOs need to communicate to their publics.  In addition, there is a “Contact Us” icon on each page, which initiates an e-mail message, as a first or last resort.  In many ways, the web site will mirror the existing organization charts for these MPOs with the addition of the actual output (budgets, maps, etc.) that various departments develop.

These documents can be reached through the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center’s web site at -

 http://uac.utoledo.edu/mrmpo/.

Note: these web pages were designed with Microsoft FrontPage 2000 and contain elements that will display accurately with the Internet Explorer web browser but may not when using the Netscape web browser. We will correct this as soon as we can.