The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is the government agency responsible for regional

transportation planning Transportation planning is the process of defining future policies, goals, investments, and spatial planning designs to prepare for future needs to move people and goods to destinations. As practiced today, it is a collaborative process that ...

and financing in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. It was created in 1970 by the

State of California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, with support from the

Bay Area Council The Bay Area Council is a business association in San Francisco, founded in 1945, and dedicated to economic development in the San Francisco Bay Area. At its inception in the post WWII years, members included Wells Fargo, Bank of America, the ...

, to coordinate transportation services in the Bay Area's nine

counties A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

Alameda An alameda is a Avenue (landscape), street or path lined with trees () and may refer to: Places Canada *Alameda, Saskatchewan, town in Saskatchewan **Grant Devine Dam, formerly ''Alameda Dam'', a dam and reservoir in southern Saskatchewan Chile ...

, Contra Costa,

Marin Marin (French) or Marín (Spanish "sailor") may refer to: People * Marin (name), including a list of persons with the given name or surname * MaRin, in-game name of professional South Korean ''League of Legends'' player Jang Gyeong-hwan (born 19 ...

, Napa,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. The MTC is fourth most populous

metropolitan planning organization A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is a federally mandated and federally funded transportation policy-making organization in the United States that is made up of representatives from local government and governmental transportation authoriti ...

in the United States.

Duties

MTC is designated a regional transportation planning agency (RTPA) by the State of California and a

(MPO) by the federal government. MTC is not the Bay Area's council of governments (COG); the

Association of Bay Area Governments The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is a regional planning agency incorporating various local governments in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. It encompasses nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay. Those counties are ...

(ABAG) holds that role. MTC administers state-provided money through the Transportation Development Act (TDA) and has decision-making authority over the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). MTC administers federal funding through various grant programs, including the Transportation for Livable Communities (TLC) Program, Low Income Flexible Transportation (LIFT) Program, and Innovative Climate Grants Program. MTC has overseen administration of toll revenue collected on the eight State-owned bridges in the Bay Area through the

Bay Area Toll Authority The Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) is a state agency created by the California State Legislature in 1997 to administer the auto tolls on the San Francisco Bay Area's seven state-owned toll bridges. On January 1, 1998, the Metropolitan Transporta ...

(BATA) since 2005. From 1997 through 2004, BATA administered only a portion of the toll revenue. Since 1999, MTC has worked to implement a regional transit fare-collection system called

Clipper A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "C ...

(formerly TransLink), where transit riders use a single card to pay fares on the region's different transit systems. MTC manages various regional operational programs, including 511, the Freeway Service Patrol (FSP), call boxes, ridesharing,

FasTrak FasTrak is the electronic toll collection (ETC) system used in the state of California in the United States. The system is used statewide on all of the toll roads, toll bridges, and high-occupancy toll lanes along the California Freeway an ...

electronic toll collection, regional pavement management (including the pavement management system software StreetSaver), arterial operations, and regional signal timing programs. MTC operates a library that jointly supports MTC and ABAG. The library, which is open to the public, has a collection covering transportation and planning issues for the Bay Area.

Budget

MTC's annual budget in 2019 was $1.36 billion. The MTC collected $724.9 million in toll revenue in 2019. The MTC received $372 million in grants from the state and federal government and sales tax. At the end of 2019, MTC had $3.5 billion in cash.

Governing structure

MTC is guided by a 21-member board of commissioners: * Sixteen commissioners are appointed by local elected officials. ** The five most populous counties have two representatives each: The respective counties' board of supervisors select one representative, and the mayors of the cities within the respective counties appoint the other. **The Mayor of Oakland and the Mayor of San Jose each appoint a commissioner ** The four remaining counties appoint one commissioner each, with the commissioners representing both the cities and the board of supervisors for their respective counties. * Two members represent regional agencies: ABAG and the

Bay Conservation and Development Commission A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narr ...

. * Three non-voting members are appointed to represent the federal housing department and federal and state transportation agencies. MTC is headquartered in

and has approximately 289 employees. In July 2016, the ABAG board approved the consolidation of its staff under MTC, combining the work of the Bay Area's two primary regional planning agencies. The current Chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is Napa County Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza

References

External links

Duties

Budget

Governing structure

See also

References

External links