[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: DRCOG Board Meeting--March 16, 2011

[kohls at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Cowles, Macon

110316 DRCOG Board Meeting

The Board voted to approve Phase 2 TIP projects that increased the funding for the Smith Road grade separated interchange by $10 million and reduced the projects of other jurisdictions and entities, including Boulder. Boulder lost $2.5MM of projects; the Regional Air Quality Commission lost $5.7MM.

>From the General Assembly: A bill has been introduced that would prohibit state agencies from spending any money on Ecopasses for employees. The savings would be put back into the general fund. DRCOG Board voted to oppose this bill in the General Assembly.

We received an update on the Integrated Regional  Model that has been a project of DRCOG for the last two years. Prior models of travel and behavior worked well for homogeneous landscapes like a typical suburb in Littleton or Arvada (from the $200’s; from the $400’s, etc). This new model can do mixed neighborhoods with as high variability as, say, Whittier. Thus, they are collecting data on 2,000,000 parcels around Denver—in other words, the model will permit fine grained analysis. They are doing analysis of land use and travel behavior even of individual buildings.

Existing Datasets:
Land use
Demographic
Travel
Employment
Spacial

To these data sets will be added:
Buildings and their attributes
Current Land use
Parcel attributes

This level of detail can permit very powerful analysis. The IRM will be fully rolled out, if it remains on schedule, in 2014. This will help DRCOG with the update of the long range plan—Metro Vision 2040.

Cities, including Boulder, will be asked by DRCOG to clean up some of the dat for the parcels in their jurisdiction.



Macon Cowles
Boulder City Councilor