Regional RPO Districts, Officials Meeting with TDOT Thursday

Regional Rural Planning Organizations will meet with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to discuss adjusting road project applications.

Dale Hollow RPO Coordinator Mark Dudney says Thursday’s meetings will include a presentation from TDOT officials about potentially improving how road projects are processed.

“TDOT is constantly wanting to continue to improve how projects are initiated to begin with, and that’s one of the issues they’re going to be talking about is a community transportation planning request,” Dudney says. “It basically makes it… a one-way street, sort of, into the pipeline of projects that TDOT handles.”

Dudney says the RPOs allow local governments and smaller communities to express their needs with the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

“There’s a vehicle to get local input from local governments and local stakeholders about transportation projects and the Federal Highway Administration requires each state to do that,” Dudney says. “Tennessee created the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) and RPO system, so that is how Tennessee gets local input for transportation issues and projects.”

Both the Dale Hollow and Center Hill RPO districts in the Upper Cumberland will meet at the Leslie Towne Centre in Cookeville.

The Dale Hollow District includes Clay, Fentress, Jackson, Macon, Overton, Pickett, Smith, and Trousdale counties. The Center Hill District includes Cannon Cumberland, DeKalb, Putnam, Warren, White, and Van Buren counties.