New Valley MVP: Mat-Su Borough Gets a Metropolitan Planning Organization

A Historic Board

Local governments within the designated zone established a policy board charged with the decision-making duties of the new MPO and establishing a technical committee that acts as an advisory committee for technical decisions. Fortunately, the Mat-Su Borough and Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) were anticipating the designation and had already begun discussing who should be included, Sollien says. Naturally, leaders in Palmer and Wasilla would take part, as would the Mat-Su Borough and DOT&PF.

The two tribal organizations in Mat-Su, the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council and the Knik Tribe, have boundaries that split the borough, so it made sense to include them, Sollien says. In doing so, MVP became the first MPO in Alaska to have tribal governments on its policy board.

“The State of Alaska has not always recognized tribes as governments, so it was historic when our pre-policy board decided that MVP’s policy board would include all of the regional governments. The fact that the State of Alaska agreed that Chickaloon and Knik tribes were recognized at an equal level to the other regional governments made the decision even more historic,” Sollien says.

Brian Winnestaffer, transportation director for Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, says Chickaloon’s involvement is in keeping with its efforts to secure grants that will benefit tribal members and those who live in its area.

“In my twenty years with the tribe, when I first started, we didn’t get along with the state very well. Now we’re all working together, trying to pull funding from different pots,” he says.

Requiring a Local Voice

MPOs were created to ensure regional cooperation in transportation planning. During the ‘40s and ‘50s, state highway departments across the Lower 48 gobbled up transportation dollars to develop the massive Interstate Highway System, reshaping communities with little local input. Then came the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, which included a section establishing new planning rules for urban areas.

The section included a directive that the Secretary of Transportation could no longer approve transportation projects in urban areas with 50,000 or more residents unless the projects were part of a list developed through a “continuing, cooperative, and comprehensive” transportation planning process that included local and regional governments and state transportation departments that came to be known as MPOs. The goal is to ensure federal transportation funds meet local needs and address local priorities.

Now, Sollien says, state transportation officials must consider the transportation planning priorities of local governments.

“Having an MPO gives local governments and the state a seat at the same table,” she says, explaining that the MPO can consider essential questions: Where is the population growing? Where is the greatest need for upgrades? How can we make sure we’re on the same page to make sure growth is addressed?

Sollien says city, borough, and tribal representatives are working together in ways they have not in the past. If Mat-Su did not form an MPO and carry out its duties, it would forfeit eligibility for federal surface transportation funds that would normally be used in its area.

A 2023 frequently asked question sheet Sollien and her team prepared states that there was $190 million of proposed federal transportation funding for the Mat-Su that year, and around $725 million proposed for the next four years.

“In the absence of these federal funds, communities in the Mat-Su would need to support transportation projects with other revenue, such as tax dollars,” the sheet states.

To receive the federal funds and become an MPO in good standing, MVP completed several steps: formalize a policy board, finalize an operating agreement, decide on an organizational structure, decide who is on its policy board and technical committee, develop a Metropolitan Transportation Plan (a long range plan with a twenty-year outlook), and create a transportation improvement plan (TIP), which is a fiscally constrained list of transportation priorities that covers four years.

The federal government pays local MPOs between $400,000 and $600,000 per year to conduct the planning processes required by the urban designation. However, a local match of 9.03 percent in non-federal funding is required—that’s the amount the policy board members must pay through membership dues. That 9 percent match is in effect for the transportation projects the MPO puts forward as well, Sollien says.

The MPOs for Fairbanks and Anchorage operate under the umbrella of their respective municipalities. But as a second-class borough, the Mat-Su Borough does not have the power to host an MPO, and the cities of Wasilla, Palmer and the tribes did not have the capacity to host or sponsor the organization. So MVP’s policy board chose to form as a nonprofit, Sollien says.

A Planning Organization Needs a Plan

The MVP MPO is now up and running, having secured its policy and technical committee boards and obtained nonprofit status. Now it’s developing a metropolitan transportation plan that addresses likely needs for the area across multiple modes over the next twenty years. Once that is complete, MVP can develop and adopt a TIP, which is the key to unlocking federal transportation funding.

The Federal Highway Administration takes MPO input seriously. When the agency rejected the DOT&PF Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) in February 2024, the first reason stated for its rejection was that the STIP included projects located within MPO areas that the MPOs themselves had not included in their own TIP.

“Specifically, the DOT&PF excluded the Metropolitan Planning Organizations in the development of the draft STIP provided for public review. This has resulted in programming decisions that did not originally go through the MPO planning processes, including long-range planning in the metropolitan transportation plans, air quality conformity reviews, and consideration for the MPO’s transportation improvement programs,” states a Federal Highway Administration/Federal Transportation Administration Federal Planning Finding document that outlines the reasons the Alaska DOT&PF 2024–2027 STIP was initially rejected.

One of those decisions related to eight bridge replacements, totaling nearly $302 million, along the Alaska, Richardson, and Steese highways. The bridges were linked to hauling gold ore from the Manh Choh mine about 250 miles to be processed at Kinross’ Fort Knox mine site.

FAST Planning stated that, although it supported the bridge replacement projects, those replacements were not on the MPO’s list of priorities.

Ben White, the Central Region DOT&PF planning chief, says it’s not uncommon in STIPs to insert projects that are outside an MPO’s TIP list. “We’re a small state; everyone knows everyone. It becomes a political football. There are always a few projects that get stuck in the STIP that leave folks scratching their heads,” White says.

The Knik Arm Bridge is one of those footballs, he notes—a long-discussed megaproject that AMATS didn’t include on its project list. Having an MPO in place helps “avoid situations of concern or surprise,” he says.

The MVP MPO wasn’t fully in place when the STIP was submitted in 2023, so MVP members didn’t have full-fledged input. Although it is still developing a Metropolitan Transportation Plan and the resulting TIP, MVP’s policy board asked that federal funding earmarked for Mat-Su be allocated to projects that were already in the works.

“We developed a program of projects, like a mini TIP, for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, to take our allocation, which is about $7 [million] to $8 million in 2024 and 2025, and to put our dollars toward projects that are already existing,” Sollien says.

All of the projects that the MVP MPO allocated funding for are in the amended STIP, Sollien says—although those projects are currently in the design phase.

Highlighting Local Needs

While having an MPO doesn’t necessarily open the door to more federal funding statewide, it should mean projects of local importance within the MPO will have a higher priority on the statewide list.

“There are a few big legacy projects in there now that we’re contributing to, like the bike path along Palmer-Fishhook [Road], which really makes my heart sing. The borough agreed to do that even though it’s a state road. The borough bonded for it, and they also applied for a CTP [Community Transportation Program] grant… so that project was awarded,” Sollien says.

MVP also requested planning funds to assess pavement conditions on roads throughout the MVP boundaries, and for funds for both a streetlight and road sign management plan.

“We are setting aside about $1 million a year of our funding for an ‘improvement program’; those funds will be available annually to replace signs, streetlights, and upgrade the pavement of roads. It will be a revolving program. As soon as these three asset management plans are complete with a list of prioritized projects, the community will start seeing projects happening,” she says. “Hopefully we’ll get those [plans] finished within the year.”

DOT&PF strives to get community feedback on transportation projects and to incorporate community needs even without MPOs, White says. But there are a lot of community needs throughout the state.

“Without the MPO, that money [the $7 million to $8 million now designated for Mat-Su through the MPO] might go wherever the state might want to put it,” White says.

With the MPO, projects that might rank lower on the state priority list can be addressed. “For example, we have sections of road out there [in Mat-Su] where the crash data and traffic counts might not rise to the height of something in Kenai… We can put that $8 million toward that project” if the MVP policy board decides it is a priority, he says.

It’s a part of the job White says he likes least: telling people that DOT&PF is unable to deal with a road problem because there have not yet been enough accidents to require action.

“It’s one of those things that breaks my heart. Transportation sometimes can be very cold—that’s the hard part. This allows us to prioritize projects within the MPO boundary,” White says.