NEW CITY, NY, – Rockland County Executive Ed Day was confirmed on February 27, 2020, as Co-Chair of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC). The confirmation was made during the Council’s Annual Meeting at the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan.

County Executive Day will serve as Co-Chair of the Council for 2020-2021, along with NYSDOT Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez. He has served as a Principal on the Council and Rockland County’s voting representative since he took office in 2014.

Speaking during the meeting County Executive Day said, “As co-chair, I will be dedicated to efforts that improve the region’s transportation network, and especially to increasing transit access and service in underserved communities to create more and better options than driving. This Council’s support of the Gateway Program will be a key element to realizing the goal of providing a convenient, flexible and sustainable transportation system within the NYMTC region.”

NYMTC is our area’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). Since the 1970s, federal transportation law has mandated that urbanized areas with populations over 50,000 have a designated MPO in order to qualify for federal transportation funding. NYMTC, which serves as the MPO for NYC, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley, is comprised of nine voting member agencies and seven advisory members.

The NYS DOT Commissioner serves as permanent NYMTC co-chair, and the other co-chair position rotates among members. NYMTC provides a collaborative planning forum to address transportation-related issues, develop regional plans and make decisions on the use of federal transportation funds. Council members include the County Executives of Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, the commissioners of the New York City Department of City Planning, the New York City and New York State Departments of Transportation, and the chief executive officers of Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, along with other federal, state and regional transportation and environmental officials.

Rockland County’s membership in NYMTC enables the County to participate in the regional transportation planning process required by federal law that determines how transportation funding is spent within the region. During last week’s Council meeting, County Executive Day made the motion to adopt the Council’s 2020-2021 Unified Planning & Work Program, which, among other projects, is allocating funds for corridor studies of Routes 303 and 304 in Rockland County.