BISMARCK, ND ( KXNET ) — Every five years, the Bismarck-Mandan Metropolitan Planning Organization , or MPO, collects public feedback in order to update its master transportation plans.
“It’s very difficult to get everything you want in one bag,” explained MPO’s executive director Rachel Lukaszewski. “We want to know from the public what they want us to prioritize as we’re looking at projects to either maintain or improve the system.”
In their open house held late last year, the Bismarck-Mandan MPO heard concerns about safety, biking and walking, and efficiency and reliability.
“These elements — they not only make the community safer to travel, but they also make it nicer to travel,” shared Lukaszewski.
Now they’re holding a second open house, showing how they’re using that public feedback to create various projects in the area.
Community members can vote on the importance of these projects using dots that they place on the poster board.
“Those dots will give priority to certain goals and objectives in the plan,” explained Lukaszewski.
Major projects set to be completed within the next 25 years include more roundabouts and a new bridge crossing the Missouri River.
Lukaszewski says another aspect of the plan that has seen quite a bit of feedback public transportation.
“If there are comments that the public has on transit specifically, if they leave that with our study, it will not only be maintained within our final report but also be used as further feedback for projects that might involve transit or be a good partnership for transit.”
NDDOT to host public input meetings for Dickinson’s Direction 2050 To ensure the projects will be effective, the MPO is teaming up with local cities and counties to predict the places where the community will grow through the year 2050.
“It’s really important that we get in front of where that growth will happen and we’re able to plan the transportation systems in a smart way so that people don’t have really negative impacts as our communities do grow.”
The MPO will also be having a public meeting on July 3rd, during Mandan’s Art in the Park event, where they’ll be sharing the priority list of projects.
If you missed the meeting but would like to provide feedback, you can do so virtually until May 29.
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