It is hard to think of a public agency that has had a more devastatingly negative impact on our community that the MPO.
That’s the Memphis Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the wonks among us; however, the vast majority of our citizens have never even heard of it despite the incredible damage that it has done to Memphis and Shelby County budgets, to the overall quality of life for this community, and to the sustainability of our region.
There are similar organizations all over the United States, but our MPO has been recognized for more than a decade as being one of the most inequitable, least representative of them all. Memphis has one vote of 26. In other words, the vote by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton – whose constituents make up almost 60% of the area’s population – can be offset by the votes by the mayors of Piperton and Galloway, Tennesee, or the mayors of Walls and Byhalia, Mississippi.
It’s no wonder that the MPO is the best friend that developers and the asphalt lobby have ever had here as the agency looks for more and more roads to build while summarily ignoring the greater role that public transit plays in successful urban communities. About $200 million a year is routed through the MPO for transportation projects, but the money for public transit amounts to petty cash in a cigar box. It’s said that MPO actually stands for More Paving Options and it’s hard to argue with that.
Pushing Our Buttons
So, faced with blistering criticism from transportation experts, academicians, and urbanists who have concluded that the MPO is inherently biased, what is it preparing to do? To double down so that Memphis essentially has no opportunity to influence the agenda.
Here’s how it works. Today, Memphis has only one vote in any “regular vote,” but it can request a “critical vote” which is cast by population proportion. However, it takes a two-thirds (67%) vote to overturn the regular vote and Memphis still comes up short since it represents 57%. In other words, it gives the appearance of giving Memphis a fairer opportunity but in truth, Memphis essentially has no chance to succeed in a critical vote because the actual voting numbers have never been more unfavorable for Memphis.
We’re not saying that the MPO should be like the Security Council and Memphis should be able to ignore the suburbs’ needs by casting its veto, but we are saying that a system which turns a deaf ear to concerns about racial and spatial balance to the voting is nothing short of unconscionable. It also explains why the demands for new roads are never-ending despite the disproven theory that new roads reduce traffic congestion and the proven fact that the MPO’s fingerprints are all over the decisions that gave us sprawl and more sprawl – to the point of bringing Shelby County Government to the brink of bankruptcy and of incentivizing the greatest population relocation in the history of this community as Memphians were subsidized to move.
We know, we know. We do get emotional about this issue. However, our emotions are magnified by more than a decade of inaction to correct the inequities built into the system and the vandalism wreaked upon our community as a result of MPO decisions.
All That’s Left Is a Lawsuit
Here’s the thing: we have finally reached the wall and that in the face of more inaction to correct this problem, citizens have no option but to consider a lawsuit based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Meanwhile, MPO also continues its tradition of discouraging meaningful public input and transparency. At its March meeting, it approved changes to its bylaws that will continue, if not expand, those tendencies. There are questions about whether the MPO even followed its own rules in approving these bylaws, and we predict that later this week (1:30 p.m. Thursday at the UT Health Science Center’s Student Alumni Building at 800 Madison), when the organization considers approval of the minutes of that meeting, they will give short shrift to an issue as inconvenient as transparency.
As for the negative impact that the MPO continues to have on our community, we quote Chuck Marohn, leader of the Strong Towns movement, who said it better than anyone we know two years ago: “The MPO is the single largest obstacle to positive change and reform that Memphis has to deal with. This is ironic because it is an organization that works on broad consensus, does not project much power and authority and seems bureaucratically averse to controversy. The MPO holds the purse strings for billions of dollars, however, and that money that has been and is continuing to be used to reshape the Memphis region in a way that is destroying its long term financial viability. This system needs immediate reform.
“The first thing to note about the (Memphis) MPO is that it is not really a planning organization. Community planning and regional planning involves much more than simply allocating transportation dollars. Transportation has an enormous impact on land use, but land use also dramatically impacts demands and preferences for transportation. To be completely blind to one half of that equation, or worse, to believe that government transportation spending is simply a response to demands of the free market is dangerous, particularly when dollars allocated by the MPO overwhelm any other capital spending or local economic development initiatives.
Justifications
“Contrary to the current focus of the MPO, the Memphis region does not have a congestion problem. Congestion is a symptom of poor land use practices that give people no option but to utilize the hierarchical road network for every trip. Since money allocated to transportation projects through the MPO go predominantly to fighting congestion, it reinforces the existing hierarchical road network. Ultimately, that spending simply increases the congestion problem while moving it from one place to another
“An argument that Memphis is required to prioritize certain approaches and specific projects because of air quality non-attainment requirements misses the mark…Current efforts to ‘fight congestion’ by improving traffic flow has the paradoxical result of actually increasing the amount people drive. Besides the obvious fact that the Memphis region lacks the revenue to continue on this path, the only way to meet non-attainment goals is to improve the productivity of the land use pattern, giving people more choice of destinations and ways to travel there.
“The Memphis region and the City of Memphis in particular would be better off receiving less financial support from the state and federal government if that money could be used more flexibly to improve the region, as opposed to obtaining more money that requires perpetuating the current system of transportation and land use.
A Smarter MPO
“Today the MPO is wired to maximize the region’s share of federal and state transportation spending, regardless of the overall impact on the area. That approach needs to change to be more strategic in nature. To say, as the Brookings Institute has, that the City of Memphis is underrepresented on the MPO is an enormous understatement. In terms of population, population density, tax base, area and overall productivity, the City of Memphis dwarfs every other member of the MPO, yet it has limited representation. A system that fails to give the City of Memphis a majority vote or, at the very least, a veto, is simply not representative of the geography of the Memphis region.
“And an MPO that requires a large local match for maintenance projects where no near term revenue is generated is needlessly harming its own region. I am not aware of any federal requirement that mandates this approach and I have seen other MPOs that do not have this requirement. Project prioritization and matching requirements need to be realigned to support core maintenance activities.
“The MPO needs to be reformed to give Memphis a greater voice. It also needs to either significantly diminish its role so that it is strictly in service of local planning and economic development initiatives or it needs to become more active and collaborative in those efforts. The priorities of the MPO – fighting congestion, expanding capacity and securing the maximum level of funding need to be subordinated to the priorities of (1) maintenance of critical system components, (2) a focus on high return investments and (3) increasing the value and producing of existing Memphis neighborhoods.”
MPO is under administration of opd. the ‘planning’ organ with no plan.
few planners, and no direction, other than the odd application for billboards, truck-mounted restaurants, and cell towers.
pro-active? neighborhood oriented? meh. the money’s gone, along with that staff.
MPO is simply responding to the needs expressed by most of it’s members. I’d suggest that if Memphis wants more-the leadership of the city lobby the larger membership harder.
Memphis needs to form an alliance with one or more Shelby Co, municipalities to reach 67% of the vote. With the aging of Bartlett and Germantown, the MPO policies will hurt these cities as well as Memphis.
The most recent MPO plan is a fraud and it doesn’t make sense except at a political level. The technical analysis and conclusions are flawed, but are hidden by a massive document that defies readability. The most recent national Transportation Act called for the plan to pay more attention to land use policy; and the MPO concluded the Land Use Trends (fueled by the road building) was the best policy on land use, which simply perpetuates sprawl.
Henry Loeb complained about the disproportionate vote back in 1968 and Memphis Mayors have not grasped the problem since. You are correct, a lawsuit may be the only solution to change the system throughout the U.S.
Spot on… but the system has been broken for an extended period of time and no one has seen fit to raise these serious questions beyond private conversations, individual letters/memos or the internet.
Before I would be willing to place my head on the potential chopping block, I for one would need to know that 1) at least one of the parties is aware of the need for change 2) said party would be willing to play at least a supportive role (would have my back) and 3) should the system be altered in a way that benefits the existing urbanized area, that the responsible parties would know how to best employ the opportunities once provided.
While the response to the point “1” may be in the affirmative, point “2” leaves me in doubt and point “3” seems to be an extremely dubious assumption.