Chester County's Transportation Priority Projects
Posted September 28, 2023
Every two years the Chester County Planning Commission (CCPC) prepares a Transportation Improvement Inventory (TII) to identify and prioritize the transportation needs and projects that have been recommended by Chester County municipalities and stakeholders over time. The 2023 version of the TII includes 529 proposed roadway, bridge, bicycle and pedestrian, freight, and transit projects, for a total estimated cost of $4.52 billion.
While the TII provides the base of transportation needs and projects, the Planning Commission also works with a cross sectional committee of Chester County stakeholders and elected leaders to produce its biennial Transportation Priority Projects (TPP) brochure. This brochure identifies the top Roadway, Public Transit, and Bicycle and Pedestrian priority projects for advancement to both achieve the transportation goals of Landscapes3 and provide for an efficient and reliable multimodal transportation system in Chester County. The 2023 TPP brochure was sent to PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll — who also serves as the Chair of the State Transportation Commission — earlier this September.
Both the TII and TPP efforts are Chester County's first steps in the process of updating the region's Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). The TIP is the fiscally constrained regionally agreed-upon list of priority transportation projects, as required by federal law. The TIP is managed by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) which serves as the region's Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPO and updates the TIP every two years.
Chester County works with DVRPC, the other suburban counties (Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery), and Philadelphia to establish the list of projects included in the update. Due to the fiscal constraint, and with the projects and needs far exceeding the available funding, prioritization of projects is key. While transportation funding has increased in the past couple of years with the passing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), more funding is needed to address all the transportation needs in Southeast PA.
The current FY2025 TIP update is just getting underway and will be completed in mid-2024 when the DVRPC Board adopts the updated program, and it will go into effect with the start of Federal fiscal year (FY2025) on October 1, 2024.