Transportation Plan Repository and Archive (UTCM 10-20-58)

This project created a repository and archive for transportation planning documents in Texas within the established Texas A&M Repository (http://digital.library.tamu.edu). This transportation planning archive and repository provides ready access to transportation plans to planners, researchers, policy makers, and the public--whether for planning purposes, research, or general information. The repository will become a historic archive of decision-making documents to which planners can refer. Past decisions and their outcomes inform future decisions, part of a continuous, comprehensive, and cooperative process to improve transportation mobility for all. This project developed a process for collecting transportation plans, creating repository records, and for uploading the documents. It established a homepage for the collection and developed a consistent set of metadata for elements of the repository records such as agency names, dates, and plan topics. The archive currently contains the long-range transportation plans from metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico; all are posted in the Texas A&M Repository at http://repository.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/90584. The plans are being made available without charge as a public service. The Texas A&M Repository provides persistent and reliable access to digital works for wide distribution and long-term preservation. The project leverages the underlying database and search interface that are part of the Texas A&M Repository and takes advantage of the Repository's servers, storage, and commitment to maintain the files permanently. The Texas A&M Repository can be used by anyone with Internet access. International standards used by the Repository and cooperative arrangements among similar repositories result in making the documents readily discoverable through search engines such as Google. The long-term goal is that the repository and archive expand its transportation plan collection and provide even greater benefits to the public and transportation planning community.