At the Committee on Planning's Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) Task Force meeting on April 13, Pennsylvania DOT's Jacqueline Koons-Felion was announced as the group's new Vice Chair.

Jacqueline is a 35+ -year employee of PennDOT, who is currently a section chief of the Air Quality and Federal Initiatives in the Center for Program Development and Management under the Planning Deputate. Her responsibilities include oversight of Congestion Management, Air Quality and Conformity efforts, support of Federal Initiatives to Executive Staff, Chair of PennDOT’s Air Quality Work Group along with oversite of other federal programs such as Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside, Scenic Byways and Recreational Trails. Prior to her current position, half of Jacqueline’s career entailed working in many Highway Administration disciplines such as maintenance, emergency preparedness, project management, environmental, facility and contract management activities within PennDOT Central Office and Engineering District 8-0. Jacqueline graduated from the Pennsylvania State University.

The CMAQ Task Force provides a forum for communications, guidance, and resources focused on the CMAQ program that state transportation agencies need to address. The group meets monthly each Second Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern. For meeting access links, please contact the AASHTO staff liaison Will Lusk at wlusk@aashto.org.

On April 14, the Committee on Planning's Steering Committee finalized development of the group's New Member Guide.

This resource is designed for incoming members of the Committee on Planning and its subgroups to learn about its structure and how to best lend their expertise and interests.

In a welcome letter on Page 2, Chair Kristina Swallow emphasized the importance of engagement by writing, "We hope you take advantage of the many opportunities to become involved – whether through our regular meetings, online and in-person capacity building, or even sharing your agency’s planning achievements via our weekly newsletter. These platforms are great ways to network with and learn from your peers from other states."

The New Member Guide is available for download by visiting planning.transportation.org or by clicking the left image.

The Multimodal Surface Transportation Planning Task Force held its re-launched meeting on April 7 with 31 participants from across the country. The meeting featured robust discussion on upcoming Complete Streets legislation and pedestrian safety.

At this kickoff meeting, Chair Jessica Griffin of New Mexico DOT announced that the task force will meet virtually on a monthly basis each First Wednesday at 3:00 PM Eastern. The group meets next on May 5, 2021. All members of state DOTs are welcomed to participate. For meeting access links, please contact the AASHTO staff liaison Will Lusk at wlusk@aashto.org.

The Multimodal Surface Transportation Planning Task Force provides a forum for communications, guidance, and resources focused on planning, policy, and performance management for multimodal issues related to passenger transportation in order to support balanced representation of all surface transportation modes in transportation planning and policy.

The new AASHTO Transportation Asset Management (TAM) Guide is now available! It is designed to help transportation agencies advance TAM practices and support them as they conduct TAM activities. The Guide will be especially helpful now as agencies prepare 2022 transportation asset management plans (TAMP). This interactive webinar miniseries will help participants familiarize themselves with what is in the Guide and how to use it to meet their TAM needs.

The first webinar titled "Preparing for your 2022 TAMP with the TAM Guide" will be on Wednesday, April 21 at 2:00 PM. Click here to register. This will be the introductory session to the TAM Guide Book Club miniseries. Presentations will address how agencies can use the Guide to help them with the development of their 2022 TAMP. The webinar will also introduce the format and contents of this webinar series.

Additional TAM webinar information is available on the TAM portal by clicking here.