Effective transportation designed to move people and goods around efficiently is essential for thriving communities.  Moreover, reliable transportation is central in improving quality of life.  When considering transportation investments, it is important to not only take care of short-term needs, but it is also important to develop a set of long-term investments.  To accomplish this, the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO) develops a long-range regional blueprint, or Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) to help guide multimodal transportation investments in order to promote system efficiency as well as to maximize the use of scarce transportation resources

LRTPs have a planning horizon of at least twenty years and are updated regularly (every five years in Hampton Roads) in order to reflect changing conditions and priorities.  Changes in growth can impact travel demand on the regional transportation system just as changes in the environment and technology can impact how people will travel in the future; therefore future plans must consider alternatives to effectively address these conditions.  Once alternatives are determined and prioritized, funds are identified to pay for the projects.  This entire process takes approximately five years to complete and requires regional cooperation and public participation.

Over the past two years, the HRTPO has been updating the Hampton Roads LRTP to the horizon year 2045.  To update the LRTP, HRTPO staff assesses the current transportation system to determine the condition of roadways, bridges and tunnels, congestion issues, safety issues, etc. and forecasts where growth is anticipated across the region.  As part of the 2045 LRTP, HRTPO staff will also be employing scenario planning to investigate plausible alternate futures and their potential impacts on the transportation system.  In addition to developing the 2045 baseline scenario, three additional future scenarios will be developed through our collaborative regional stakeholder process.  Candidate transportation projects will be evaluated through each of the alternative scenarios in an effort to identify those projects that provide the most benefit to the region regardless of which future assumption is analyzed thereby highlighting smart investment for Hampton Roads. Once completed, the 2045 LRTP will set forth a regional multimodal blueprint to address forecasted transportation needs by analyzing various economic, demographic, and technological trends the region is anticipated to experience over the next twenty years.