Assistance to Other Military Regions

According to the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Military Transportation Committee, most U.S. metropolitan areas with military installations currently have a disconnect between those installations and transportation organizations, such as the local Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) and the state Department of Transportation (DOT). The Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO), however, has a long-standing relationship with the military community and has taken steps to increase related efforts in recent years. The HRTPO has advanced the cause of planning in Hampton Roads and, by example, in the United States through a coordinated approach to meeting the transportation needs of the military located in the Hampton Roads region.

In July 2012, Mr. Sam Belfield, Senior Transportation Engineer, from the HRTPO staff submitted a paper to the Transportation Research Board (TRB) entitled "Integrating the Military into the Metropolitan Planning Process: The Hampton Roads, Virginia Experience." The TRB paper was peer-reviewed and accepted for presentation at the annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in January 2013 and publication in TRB's Transportation Research Record (Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Number 2397 2013). The purpose of the paper was to inform other metropolitan areas about the integration of the military into the transportation planning process in Hampton Roads and to provide a summary of key findings from the region's Military Transportation Needs Study. Other MPOs can apply the methodologies, results, successes, and lessons learned from Hampton Roads to their respective regions.

"The Transportation Research Board is one of six major divisions of the National Research Council. The mission of the Transportation Research Board is to provide leadership in transportation innovation and progress through research and information exchange, conducted within a setting that is objective, interdisciplinary, and multimodal. The Board's varied activities annually engage more than 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers and practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their expertise in the public interest."

Papers published in the Transportation Research Record have been reviewed by at least three experts and "accepted for publication through the Transportation Research Board's peer review process".

As a member of TRB's Standing Committee on Transportation for National Defense, Mr. Belfield has shared his work with interested parties around the nation.

View the TRB paper "Integrating the Military into the Metropolitan Planning Process: The Hampton Roads, Virginia Experience" (PDF).