The Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency: What This Is and Why You Should Care

/ RVSB

January 3, 2024

The Palm Beach TPA: Who Are They?

For the most complete information you can visit their website at www.palmbeachtpa.org From their website their function is summarized: “The Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency (TPA) is a federally-mandated public agency that works with partners across Palm Beach County, Florida and the United States to plan, prioritize and fund the transportation system. The TPA’s mission is a safe, efficient and connected multimodal transportation system for users of all ages and abilities.”

The governing and advisory portions of it are broken up into several separate committees: The Governing Board, the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), the Citizen’s Advisory Committee (CAC), the Vision Zero Advisory Committee (VZAC), the Transportation Disadvantaged Local Coordinating Board (LCB) and last but not least the Executive Committee Board.  It’s noteworthy that both the Governing Board and the Executive Committee Board consist of locally elected officials.

All of these boards and committees have respective responsibilities that are clearly explained in the Palm Beach TPA website.  You can also look through to learn who represents your region or municipality and if there are vacancies that you would consider applying for to help the TPA’s overall work.

However, I’m acquainted primarily with the CAC, known as the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, as I had the honor of serving as a member representing district 1 of Palm Beach County for over 2 years.  

My Palm Beach TPA Connection

It was just over a month ago that I made my resignation official serving as a member of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee (CAC) for my local Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency here in south Florida. 

A mixture of life episodes including an increased workload as a daytime educator and administrator for elementary, middle schooler and high schooler students led to my decision after serving for just over 2 years. At time of this writing, the CAC meets on Wednesdays just after lunchtime which is not conducive to most K-12 educators’ schedules.  Also, I believe it’s best to give someone else the chance to serve on this committee to help keep it vibrant with new viewpoints and backgrounds.

I began my time there in spring of 2021 after being appointed by Commissioner Maria Marino of District 1 of Palm Beach County.  It was a welcome assignment as I was ready to give back more to my community but not quite ready to consider running for local office as a public servant.  My children were still young enough that I could manage the occasional absences from the home during the meeting times for the CAC.  Yet, there were some occasions that the CAC discussion time would unravel along with the unexpected extended hours and I felt the pressure of having to decide between public service and taking care of the urgent needs such as taking kids to swim practice as CEO of the Home.

During my first meeting I was initially overwhelmed with all the numbers as they pertained to the proposed budgets and planning calendars for the various transportation projects and intermodal initiatives.  I reached out immediately to close colleagues and friends who were elected officials here and beyond to ask if this would get any easier—”this” being the rapid digestion of facts and hopeful initiatives driven by the resident staff of an agency such as the Palm Beach TPA.  The consensus is that, yes, while it may be a lot at first, it would become familiar and I would do well to utilize the opportunity to have the agenda reviews with staff prior to each meeting to give me the opportunity to ask questions.

I cannot say enough good things about the Palm Beach TPA staff members.  They were always most informative with their meeting reminder emails and keeping in touch with us individually if we missed a meeting and being flexible to our needs as they arose.  There was one time that I was concerned that our local federal representative was making ill comments about a particular transportation plan the Palm Beach TPA was involved with and I sought a meeting with the director. I was grateful to get immediate in-person meeting time and follow-up afterwards. It meant so much to me as a citizen that the TPA staff was willing to help keep the communication lines open whenever there was a question or challenge.

Intially I received the visions and initiatives for a multi-modal future in our urbanized south Florida as optimistical hopeful for the future but they clashed with the reality that I witness on a daily basis–most local citizens are not ready to use public transportation frequently as is currently proposed as one of the solutions to traffic congestion in our county.  Also, I would be disingenuous if I didn’t mention that there were countless times when some of my fellow committee members found themselves (myself included) devolving into lines of questions, irratic thoughts spoken aloud and rigorous discussions that wouldn’t necessarily help the process but took up hours of a meeting. Of course, that’s sometimes the messy part of helping generate the public discourse needed to learn what direction to advise the decision-makers to consider when budget allocations or tranportation plans are on the chopping block.

However, despite some sobering revelations over the last couple of years I found that this particular committee was fruitful as a part of the vetting process for public opinion for the Palm Beach TPA and the governing board members to sift through—especially when it came to the relevance and necessity for certain projects to receive federal funding for specific localities.  For instance, as I drive on interstate I-95 in north county today I’m seeing the roadway construction projects underway that I once read about in a meeting report at an earlier CAC meeting.

Again, being on the CAC was a great opportunity to share the concerns of my area in a public forum and serve alongside with colleagues and friends like Sammie Brown of Riveria Beach (pictured below) and fellow Palm Beach Gardens resident James Garvin. Linda Hess now represents district 1 and I’m confident she will represent everyone to the best of her ability. Thanks to everyone giving their time on CAC and the other Palm Beach TPA committees and boards.

How Can Palm Beach County Residents Interact with Palm Beach TPA?

As one navigates the website, you’ll find there are several ways to interact with the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency.  Among them, but not limited to, are the following that you may find of interest to click on right away:

If you are a Palm Beach County resident then I don’t need to share with you how traffic patterns and modes of transportation affect you on a daily basis.  While we can all complain and battle constant inner road rage about the congestion and high speeders, this is an agency built to recieve information from the public if only they would participate through the above avenues.

Please consider learning more about the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency and consider sharing your opinion at least once a year to help this agency function with a better knowledge of what our citizenry wants and needs in relation to transportation in PBC.

R.V.S.B.

Note: Additional thanks to Valerie Nelson, current Executive Director of the Palm Beach TPA, who received countless questions from me over the years and is doing a great job representing the agency.

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