At their Nov. 12, 2024, meeting, the Pinal Regional Transportation Authority Board suspended current work efforts on developing a new Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). The action was recommended by the Transportation Technical Advisory Committee and staff. The Board’s action was due to financial considerations and the region’s inability to fully fund a viable regional transportation plan consistent with state statute. The Board considered nine (9) regional transportation and major arterial road projects. The Board acknowledged that the costs for delivering those projects, despite evaluating multiple options, far exceeded the ability to fund the projects over the 20-year forecast period. The Board was presented with a financial analysis that included debt-financing, phasing and inflationary forecasts which led to the Board’s decision.
Accompanying the Board’s action, the Board was presented with an option to pursue work in the future, led by the region’s stakeholders to create a long-range Transportation Framework Study. The intent of developing a long-range transportation framework study would be to identify the entire County’s significant transportation needs, with an emphasis on funding strategies, regional corridors and their connection to the arterial road system of the County’s cities and towns.
PRTA Board Chair, Craig McFarland, Mayor of Casa Grande, stated, “While it is certainly disappointing to not be able to pursue more work on a viable regional transportation plan, this suspension of efforts in no way means that the work on regional transportation will be discontinued. We are in the fortunate position that we have tremendous collaboration and cooperation among all of our participating agencies who are deeply committed to making progress in our region. I thank everyone for their cooperation and support in getting us to this point. I look forward to the region moving forward on an alternative strategy to develop a long-range transportation framework study that will focus on not only the near-term needs but our changing environment for the next 50-years.”
The PRTA Board will continue to meet annually and on an as-needed basis in accordance with statutory provisions and its bylaws.
About the Pinal Regional Transportation Authority
The Pinal Regional Transportation Authority is an independent taxing district in Arizona (Title 48, Chapter 30) within Pinal County. The PRTA was established in 2015 by the Pinal County Board of Supervisors to coordinate multi-jurisdictional transportation planning, improvements, and funding. The PRTA is comprised of members from Pinal County plus municipalities and tribal nations within the county.