Citywide Multimodal Transportation District Takes Major Step Forward in Temple Terrace

The City of Temple Terrace is bordered or criss-crossed by five arterial roadways, the only arterial roads in the City.  All of them are operating or soon will be operating in total or in part at level of service "E" -- essentially beyond design capacity.  For all practical purposes they are failed roadways and cannot absorb any significant new vehicle traffic concurrent with any new infill or redevelopment creating that traffic.

Ironically, the traffic on these arterials are generated overwhelmingly by pass-through traffic related to the University of South Florida, Busch Gardens, and University Square Mall; and two of the arterials provide straight routes between Interstates 275 and 75.  The City's traffic impact on these arterials is relatively minimal.  Further, all of the arterials are owned and maintained by the County and the State, and are beyond the City's financial ability to maintain or improve them, even if it had jurisdiction over them.  Also, no major improvements are scheduled to any of the arterials in the foreseeable future.  Thus, the City is in a "Catch 22" when it comes to future growth and roadway transportation concurrency.

That's why the City has sought to leverage its considerable existing and future investment in sidewalks and trails into something more than local amenities, and create and commit to a citywide MTD.  Presently, only the Cities of Destin, Tallahassee, and Dunedin have successfully navigated State requirements for a MTD, and then only for a part of their cities.  Temple Terrace is the first City in the State to attempt a citywide MTD.  The process requires a long-range list of specific capital improvements, with a financially feasible plan of committed funding sources and a schedule for building the multiple alternative mobility modes, including pedestrian, bicycle, mass transit, and interconnections among them.  The alternative mobility modes must also have measurable associated levels of service.  Provisions need to be made for definition and administration of the minimum impacts to roadways, as well as for the assessing and handling of proportionate fair share costs required of new development.  Land use densities and intensities and accompanying multimodal friendly design must be planned to accommodate growth, infill, and redevelopment.

To accomplish these things, the City had to work closely with the District 7 office of the Florida Department of Transportation and the Florida Department of Community Affairs in order to satisfy all State requirements.

This last calendar quarter, the City completed and incorporated into its 7-year Comprehensive Plan update, the MTD and all related changes to the Future Land Use, Transportation (renamed the Mobility), and Capital Improvements Elements.  That Plan was transmitted to the State for review, and only one important MTD provision required adjustment.  The new Plan is now scheduled for its final public hearing and adoption in the second calendar quarter.

In the meantime, the other major step in the process involved modifying the City's transportation concurrency ordinance and its development and design code to recognize, accommodate, and implement the MTD at the regulatory level.   Accompanying this change was the development and approval of a detailed policy and procedures manual addressing the details and fine points of development review for the many and varied situations that inevitably arise during actual implementation from private development.  Both the implementing ordinances and manual have been adopted by the City this last quarter and are ready to be used.

With the Comprehensive Plan completed and the ordinances and manual approved, the City is finally positioned as the first city in Florida to have a citywide MTD, and is awaiting its first project to review.