Rural Planning Organization
The purpose of the First Tennessee Rural Planning Organization (RPO) is to involve local officials in multi-modal transportation planning through a structured process. Our goal is to ensure quality, competence, and fairness in the transportation decision-making process. The RPO process allows rural community leaders and elected officials to consider multi-modal transportation needs on a local and regional basis; the process also allows leaders to review long-term needs, as well as short-term funding priorities, and make future project recommendations to the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT).
Since the RPO was formed in 2005-2006, the main goal of the program has been to assist local governments with identifying multi-modal rural transportation needs through the Development District. As transportation funding mechanisms change throughout the District and nation, the RPO process will continue to be a valuable tool for local governments.
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The RPO Executive and Technical Committees meet quarterly, agenda items for those meeting can be found here.
Projects
The RPO Coordinator maintains an active database of elected and appointed transportation officials, as well as a database of stakeholders. Stakeholders are primarily interested citizens and principal users of the regional rural transportation system. Staff also assisted with TACIR infrastructure surveys related to transportation projects. Several new projects were identified by local officials during this process. The Coordinator also worked in several counties in the District to identify or confirm existing County Seat Connector routes. These are proposed four-lane routes from each county seat to an Interstate.
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TDOT’s Project Status Report is provided by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and is an update of projects currently underway in the First Tennessee RPO area. The Report lists projects by County and will be updated periodically. Please consider projects are constantly in a state of development and information provided in this Report may not be current with actual progress. RPO staff also maintains an interactive map of TDOT projects which is below, for a full page view of this map, please click here. In order to initiate a "Needs Assessment" for a "New Start" project, please complete and return the Community Transportation Planning Request (CTPR) Request Form to the FTDD.
Southeast Regional Electric Vehicle Information Exchange (SE REVI Map)
The map utilizes various data to inform EV infrastructure build-out decisions, including locations of current and planned Level 2 and DC fast chargers, state and national parks, Federal Highway Administration designated Alternative Fuel Corridors, hurricane evacuation routes, social equity data, and electric service provider territories. These layers include an up-to-date visualization of existing DC fast charging and Level 2 charging infrastructure in the Southeast region. The DC fast charging layer shows locations with both CHAdeMO and CCS connectors and at least two available plugs for charging. The Level 2 charging layer displays all publicly accessible Level 2 charging locations. The map can be accessed here as well.
Staff
The RPO consists of two working committees, a Technical Committee and an Executive Board, whose primary function is to work each year to prioritize projects for future funding and prioritize a list of “requests for study”. The RPO Coordinator for the region is Chase Milner, and he can be reached at (423) 928-0224.