Amador County – Amador County Transportation Commission on Tuesday gave an update on its “U-Plan” traffic mapping tool to the Amador County Board of Supervisors.

ACTC Executive Director Charles Field said the brief presentation precedes a more in-depth workshop planned for next week, which will tell how U-Plan is put together and how it works, and in which attendees “will see some of the initial model runs,” or scenarios.

Supervisor Ted Novelli asked what population numbers were used in the scenarios. He said county population and school district enrollment numbers both have declined over the last three or four years, and he wondered if that would be reflected in the scenarios.

Field said population numbers came from the California Department of Finance, and they can look at that for relative effects. He said: “We can change the numbers. We need to make it reflect how we think Amador County looks, and we will.” Novelli said he hit on the right idea, that they “can change it.”

Field said when U.C. Davis developed the U-Plan tool, they meant for the U in the name to mean that “you plan it,” and to signify the personalizing of the model scenarios to the communities.

The U-Plan workshop scenarios may include “Draft Land Use Diagrams” for 2030 and 2050, and different land-use designations. Field said it would narrow down some of the 97 different land-use designations used in Amador County to 12 different use designations in the U-Plan tool.

Field said the scenarios did not look at planning areas inside cities, but did look at the affects of having two more casinos in 2030 and 2050, those being sought in Buena Vista and Plymouth. Supervisor Brian Oneto said that would be a “worst-case scenario” because the casinos “may never be built like that.”

Field said U-Plan’s real value is in five to 10 years, when the scenario models “can be adjusted for things that we learn about.”

Oneto asked about U-Plan’s cost, and Field said it was funded by federal and Caltrans grants totaling more than $100,000, for maintenance and monitoring over a two-year period. He said they can calculate the cost to monitor it in the years after that, and he said “it shouldn’t take that much time to update it.”

Supervisor Louis Biotano said the model is “only as good as the information that goes into it.” Novelli agreed, and said the population number changes would have some affect on it too.

The workshop is set for 5-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 30 in Supervisors’ chambers.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.