MPO Boards Don’t Reflect Their Constituencies

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) play a key role in transportation planning decisions, but few of their boards are representative of the residents they serve, according to research from Yonah Freemark and Lydia Lo of the Urban Institute.

“Under federal law, MPOs are directed to prioritize transportation investments within the metro area, which can include cities, towns, and counties. As such, federal law requires MPO boards to consist of local elected officials, transportation agency officials, state officials, and their appointees,” Freemark and Lo explain.

The researchers analyzed the membership of MPO boards of the largest U.S. metro areas, and found that “though boards prioritize the inclusion of local government representatives, their voting structures often don’t represent local populations proportionally. In some metro areas, some residents’ votes can be worth 10 times as much as other residents’.” Some MPOs, such as Los Angeles, have fairly proportionate representation of the central city, while others, like Philadelphia, do not. Around 13 percent have created weighted voting systems that account for how many people each board member represents.

The researchers conclude that “the current system underrepresents many residents’ perspectives, often to the detriment of effective transportation options.”