DCTC Actions

Village of Pawling Pedestrian Plan, Pawling, New York

At its core, Moving Dutchess Forward sets a vision for our role, as the MPO for Dutchess County, in improving transportation planning, policy, and practices over the next 25 years. While we provide recommendations for our County and municipal partners, we have the most control over how we do business ourselves. This section outlines the ways we intend to incorporate the goals of Moving Dutchess Forward into our work.

1. Aligning Our Processes

a. Capital Program – Refine our project selection framework:

Refine our project selection framework for our capital program to align with this update of Moving Dutchess Forward.
- Prioritize projects that improve safety, especially at hot spot and/or high-risk locations; reliability, especially on our most congested corridors; and access, especially to basic needs destinations.
- Pursue transformative investments; focus investment in established centers; and incorporate a complete streets perspective.
- Prioritize projects that improve access and/or remove barriers for focus populations or residents in areas with high housing cost burdens.
Prioritize federal funding awards (e.g., federal transit funding, Community Development Block Grants, etc.) to projects that achieve Moving Dutchess Forward’s goals.

b. Planning Program – Align our planning work with Moving Dutchess Forward’s goals:

Refine our future planning programs to align with this update of Moving Dutchess Forward: prioritize planning tasks that address safety, reliability, and access, especially at hot spot and/or high-risk locations, on our most congested corridors, and for our focus populations. Prioritize tasks that improve access to basic needs or reduce transportation costs, especially in areas with high housing cost burdens.
Promote smart land use policies (e.g., housing for mixed incomes, mixed uses, walkable communities, development near transit, etc.), in partnership with County Planning, to reduce congestion and support transit, walking, and bicycling.
Foster coordination between the DCTC, County, State, municipalities, and other partners through DCTC meetings, our planning studies and other activities, topical forums, and the Transportation Management Area (TMA).
Work with County Planning and the County Planning Federation to educate county and local staff and board members on transportation planning best practices and tools.
Develop relationships with community-based organizations that work in identified focus areas or with focus populations and leverage those relationships to engage stakeholders and residents and address their transportation needs.

PROGRESS SINCE 2021

We’ve made significant progress on several of our planning goals from the 2021 version of Moving Dutchess Forward. Highlights include:

Multiple safety initiatives, including a countywide Transportation Safety Action Plan (2026), a speed limit reduction study for the City of Poughkeepsie (2025), and the Poughkeepsie 9.44.55 Study to redesign the Route 44/55 Arterials and Route 9 Interchange (2022).
Several bicycle & pedestrian plans, including the Beacon-Hopewell Rail Trail Feasibility Study (2025), the Spackenkill Road Sidewalk Feasibility Study (2023), Dover Plains Pedestrian Plan (2023), and Rhinebeck Route 9 Complete Streets Study (2022).
Resilient Ways Forward, a detailed vulnerability assessment to improve the climate resilience of our transportation system (2024).
Updates to our Bylaws (2024), Public Participation Plan (2022), Project Selection Framework for capital projects (2022), and organizational branding (2022).

2. Improving Safe Access

a. Continue our safety work:

Implement recommendations from our Safety Action Plan, including addressing hot spot locations and systemic/high-risk locations and pursuing safety-related programs and policies. Prioritize improvements on or near our most congested corridors, basic needs destinations, transit centers, and focus areas or populations.
Continue our safety assessments with local partners, focusing on priority safety locations and high-risk locations.
Regularly assess high-end speeding and identify locations for potential speed limit reductions, design changes, or enforcement programs.

b. Incorporate a Complete Streets approach in our planning work:

Continue to implement the County’s Complete Streets policy and use our checklist to improve planned, funded, and permitted projects with County partners.
Continue to work with our County Complete Streets Committee and partners on pedestrian safety education, including the Watch Out for Me campaign.
Work closely with County Public Works on their Universal Accessibility program to improve pedestrian infrastructure on County roads.
Encourage Complete Streets approaches with local, County, and State partners.
Continue our pedestrian plans in coordination with local municipalities.
Promote ADA transition plan best practices for municipalities.
Use and promote bicycle planning best practices (e.g., all ages & abilities facilities, Level of Traffic Stress analyses, etc.).

c. Gather better safety data and refine how we analyze crash data:

Work with NYSDOT and local partners to refine crash data reporting and analyses.
Explore how we can present crash data to the public (such as a data viewer).
Continue to improve our vehicle and pedestrian/bicycle count programs.

3. Improving Reliable Access

a. Right size our infrastructure:

Prioritize maintaining and improving existing infrastructure before adding capacity.
Consider reducing excess road or bridge capacity as part of future planning studies.

b. Address high congestion locations:

Regularly update our Congestion Management Process (CMP) and assess high-congestion locations, especially those near safety priority locations, job centers, and other basic needs destinations.
Work with road owners and local partners to develop improvements for high-congestion locations.
Work with municipalities to manage traffic and parking, particularly in centers, through our planning studies (e.g., corridor plans, redesign studies, parking plans, and safety assessments).

c. Improve access to transit:

Work with County Public Transit to evaluate and improve transit service and access to transit, develop alternate transit models, and focus on access to basic needs.
Work with Metro-North, Amtrak, and municipalities to improve train station access, including bicycle parking, sidewalk access, bus access, and parking.

d. Address local and regional freight:

Implement the recommendations of our regional freight analysis with our TMA partners.
Monitor pavement and bridge conditions and travel time reliability on truck routes and prioritize needed improvements.
Assist municipalities with addressing the local impacts of freight traffic (e.g., through safety assessments, corridor plans, and coordination with NYSDOT).

e. Incorporate Climate Resiliency into our work:

Work with County Public Works, NYSDOT, MTA, and local partners to implement the recommendations of Resilient Ways Forward, our transportation infrastructure vulnerability study, which measures the risk of flooding and other climate-related hazards across our system. Encourage partners to design projects to withstand future flooding and other hazards.
Support technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including electric vehicles and charging stations, micromobility, and cashless tolling.

f. Gather better pavement data:

Implement a uniform scoring system to measure pavement conditions on County and local roads.

4. Improving Access to Basic Needs

a. Address transportation gaps:

Promote and expand transportation options for identified focus populations in coordination with partner agencies and community organizations.
Support implementation of our Coordinated Plan to address barriers for older adults and people with disabilities.
Reduce safety, reliability, and access barriers in identified focus areas or places with high shares of focus populations, to include the following:
- Address transportation barriers in the City of Poughkeepsie by improving safety, reliability, and access on Route 9, the Route 44/55 arterials, Main Street, and other safety hot spots in the city.
- Address transportation barriers in the Village of Wappingers Falls by improving safety, reliability, and access on Routes 9 and 9D.
- Address transportation barriers in rural communities such as Dover, Milan, and Stanford by expanding transportation options.

b. Promote low-cost transportation options:

Encourage our partners to provide low-cost transportation options (walking, bicycling, transit, ridesharing) to basic needs destinations (housing, jobs, goods and services, education, and recreation), particularly in communities with high housing cost burdens.
Support Safe Routes to School studies to identify and prioritize access improvements to local schools.
Consider a trail access study to identify and prioritize rail trail connections, in coordination with County Parks.

c. Promote economic opportunity:

Work with our partners to identify and implement transportation improvements to support local economies, including small businesses and Business Improvement Districts.
Work with Destination Dutchess to support transportation improvements that enhance local and regional tourism.
Prioritize transportation investments that improve access to permanent, living wage jobs.

Competing needs and priorities can make it difficult to focus on what should happen immediately and what can perhaps wait. Societal shifts, changing political climates, and available resources often dictate what’s possible. The actions identified above set a five-year course for the DCTC, but the big ideas for improving our planning and programming processes and improving safety, reliability, and access to basic needs will stay with us for decades.

SAFETY, RELIABILITY, & ACCESS TO BASIC NEEDS GO TOGETHER

When we improve the safety and reliability of our transportation system, we also improve people’s access to basic needs. These improvements all work to remove barriers and expand access to the building blocks of life: housing, jobs, goods and services, education, and recreation.