MANSFIELD — Richland County residents will have the chance to shape the county’s transportation projects across the next 25 years.
The Richland County Regional Planning Commission, the consulting group American Structurepoint Inc, and area mayors and engineers met to kick off the planning process for the 2050 long-range transportation plan on March 14.
The plan will include multimodal transportation improvement projects in the short term (2025-2030), mid-term (2031-2040) and long-term (2041-2050). The goals include strengthening safety, public transportation, quality of life and economic development.
Philip Roth, project manager for American Structurepoint, said the team is currently in the information gathering phase. Its goal is to understand what resources Richland County currently has and which areas need improvement.
Activities the steering committee completed Thursday included outlining which intersections in the area had good traffic flow and which areas they wanted to improve.
They also discussed their personal favorite attributes of Richland County and challenges they suspect will arise during the planning process.
Mansfield Mayor Jodie Perry said she worried about elected leadership changes across the 25-year scope of the plan.
“I may think something is really important today, but if I’m not in this position to advocate for it, that could go away,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of county commissioners and council people involved over the next 25 years.”
Senior planner Ashley Newnam said the plan will be re-evaluated every five years and those meetings can include outgoing and incoming leadership if needed.
Stakeholder surveys include public transportation & land use priorities
American Structurepoint has completed a number of surveys with stakeholders to ask what types of transportation the plan should prioritize. Roth said these meetings included business owners, elected officials and social service organizations.
“Many people mentioned active transportation — bike lanes, pedestrian connectivity and things like that,” Roth said. “Higher than that was public transportation and land use development.
“We’ll look at the resources Richland County currently has, and what types of resources we think will be available at the federal, state and local level to support these types of projects across the next 25 years.”
Newnam said American Structurepoint also wants to hear from “traditionally underserved populations,” including the elderly, people of color and the Mennonite community.
“There’s an environmental justice component to that,” she said. “The elderly and the Mennonite community might rely on public transportation more than some other folks, but they also might not be too familiar with electronic surveys, so we’ll have to make sure we’re adequately serving them.”
Roth said the American Structurepoint team plans to attend community events to gather community survey responses across the upcoming months.
“We’d like for the time frame on that to be late April and early May,” he said. “We could set up our own events, but then that audience tends to be self-selecting.
“We want a cross-section of people across the county.”
American Structurepoint is based in Indianapolis but has more than 15 regional offices, including in Columbus.
“We’ve worked with communities similar to Richland County before,” Roth said. “We worked with Youngstown, some communities in southeast Ohio and places in Indiana as well.”
Roth said the consulting team will post the public survey link on social media, in buses and likely in school newsletters or utility bills.
Project manager David Baird, who is on the Richland County team, has previously focused on rural area projects.
Regional planning transportation technical director Pong Wu said community members can expect the survey to open to the public later this month.
“We’re planning to distribute a less than 5-minute online survey,” he said. “American Structurepoint will help prioritize all transportation-related inputs from the public and work with state agencies to create the plan.”
The steering committee will have follow-up meetings in the months of April, May, June, August and October. American Structurepoint hopes to have a draft of the long-range plan by October and ready for implementation by December.
The steering committee will also advertise public meetings in the coming months to invite community members to offer their input.