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About Transportation Council

The Elmira-Chemung Transportation Council (ECTC) was designated by the Governor of New York as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Elmira Urbanized Area in December 1974. MPOs were created in 1973 for urbanized areas with more than 50,000 in population. The mission of MPOs is to help build regional agreement on transportation investments and to better balance highway, mass transit and other needs, leading to more cost effective solutions to transportation problems. The ECTC is responsible for the planning and programming of any transportation project that includes Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) or Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funding.

The ECTC develops three key products: the Transportation Plan which is a statement of the direction a region will take in making transportation system investments over the next twenty years, the annual Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) which is the mechanism to coordinate the overall comprehensive transportation planning in the urban region, and the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP), a three to five year program of transportation projects and strategies drawn from the metropolitan transportation plan. Projects that have been planned and implemented by the ECTC include: Elmira Downtown Transportation Center, the southern extension of the Elmira Arterial, Lowman Crossover, Route 17 Exit 56, Daniel Zenker Road Extension, regional Park and Ride Lots, the Catharine Valley Trail, and the purchase of wheel chair accessible buses. The ECTC has been actively involved with the overall process to convert State Route 17 to Interstate 86 (see Accomplishments and Current Tasks).