Walking to school on the Tacony Creek Trail
Periodically, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) issues a four year capital transportation budget (Transportation Improvement Program or TIP) for the five Pennsylvania counties. It provides detail on which transportation projects will be funded using a combination of federal, state and local dollars.
The Circuit Coalition has been urging the DVRPC to dedicate more funding to Circuit projects. In February 2014, the Circuit Coalition delivered 2000 postcards and petition signators who called for more funding of the Circuit.
The Draft Pennsylvania TIP does contain funding for nine Circuit trail projects. But, the amount of funding dedicated to those projects over a four year period is only 0.9% of the total TIP budget. DVRPC did commit an additional $1M toward the Circuit in Year 2018.
While DVRPC deserves to be commended for committing an additional funding toward the Circuit, we also need to encourage the region to make a larger investment in future years. There are 61 Circuit projects in the five Southeastern PA counties that need design and construction funding and many of them will need to be placed onto the TIP in the coming years. If the Circuit is going to be fully built out over the next 25 years, more funding needs to be dedicated for trail segments.
Below is a chart showing the number of trail miles completed in each county of the DVRPC region.
DVRPC is accepting public comments on the draft Pennsylvania TIP by June 30th. Please take a moment to submit a comment to DVRPC calling for additional funding in the future in order to successfully build out the Circuit by 2040.