Category:121 Project Planning, Prioritization and STIP Commitments

Missouri has more transportation needs than money to address them. MoDOT selects the most critical transportation projects and focuses on the state’s highest-priority transportation needs. MoDOT effectively uses planning and decision-making to ensure Missouri’s limited transportation dollars are responsibly spent. MoDOT’s planning process is more open than ever before. Even though the overall steps in the planning process have not changed, the opportunities for public involvement at the local level have grown. The process now identifies where individual decisions are made and how local officials and citizens can most easily affect these decisions.

Once a need has been adequately scoped and a project is developed to address it, there must be a way to determine how that project compares to other projects. Statewide consistency and regional representation is also very important. MoDOT has developed a more objective process in which the public and local officials can understand how decisions are made, participate in the planning process and influence decision-making.

These decisions are complex and are based on values and environmental factors that change frequently. The planning framework relies on the right people being involved in making decisions and to adjust to changing factors and recognize that transportation planning decisions involve both objective and subjective criteria. Local officials, with input from their constituents, can also determine what’s appropriate for their communities.

MoDOT’s transportation planning process is often referred to as the Planning Framework and culminates in the production of the STIP that is MoDOT’s commitment to a 5-year construction program. The transportation planning process has quality assurances and quality control and prioritization factors. An amendment is required when adding a project to the STIP outside of the annual STIP update.