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Tim Fulton 00:00
Tim, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics lifestyle entertainment and people of our city. I’m your host, Tim Fulton, this week, when we talk about regional planning, it’s easy to picture dusty binders, endless meetings or just vague talk about growth, but for William Murdoch, Executive Director of the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, the work is a lot more urgent and a lot more human. Morpc is the quiet engine behind how 90 Central Ohio communities prepare for what’s coming next, from housing pressures to transportation demand to environmental resilience. In this conversation, William and I dig into the big swings. Why link us is finally moving from aspiration to implementation, how passenger rail could reshape the entire region and what it really takes to support fast growing communities with limited staff and resources. We also talk about the nuts and bolts, the data, the policy work and the behind the scenes coordination that helps local governments make smarter decisions, and at a moment when Central Ohio is feeling both the excitement and strain of rapid growth, William makes a compelling case for why this region can get better as it gets bigger, if we’re willing to plan like it, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes For this episode at the confluence cast.com enjoy the interview. You sitting down here with William Murdoch, the executive director of the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission. Mr. Murdoch, how are you? It’s great to see you, Tim. I’m good, good, good. Tell us high level. For those that don’t know how morpc is involved with planning Central
William Murdock 01:59
Ohio, well, thanks for the question, if you know one thing about Columbus, growth is on everybody’s mind, and how we make that growth work for us, how we solve long standing problems make this an even better place to live, those are the things that we care about. And so morphs job in the region is to bring local governments and nonprofits, whether it’s from small rural towns to the city of Columbus and its neighborhoods, everybody in between, bring folks together to inform them about what’s going on and talk a little bit about how we can make it better. And along the way, we run some good programs and we instigate some big ideas, all with that goal of making the region even better.
Speaker 1 02:38
Can you talk about some of the just to sort of put into focus the work that you do, the opportunities and challenges that you guys specifically face, like growth is a bit, you know, it’s a big, obtuse subject that everyone deals with, maybe how you help municipalities deal with it, and what are the challenges to get there?
William Murdock 02:58
Yeah, so growth could mean a lot of things, right? What we’re really focused on is the infrastructure to support it, and the environmental pieces that connect to that and where people can live. So let me break that down a little bit. We care a lot about transportation. We’re what’s called the metropolitan planning organization, so we have a special role in helping the region get in front of transportation. If you’re a growing region, you have to make sure you have safe roads. You also have to make sure you have other ways to get around, transit, trails, safe sidewalks and all of the pieces that help people get around the region, help businesses get around the region. We’re really focused on making sure the region isn’t just building enough roads to accommodate growth, but giving people the options that we don’t have. And you see that in some of the big initiatives we can talk about, whether it’s link us or passenger rail or all of the trails activities, we also focus a lot on housing and policies to support building housing and helping communities know what the needs are and how to navigate that. I could go on. We care a lot about water. We care a lot about air. Basically, think about this transportation environments and helping communities really meet the growth and help the residents.
Tim Fulton 04:11
And we’ve talked to some other folks on your staff, both this year and in years past. About you know, how are you doing this from a policy perspective, how are you doing this from a data perspective. How are you doing this from a empowering and educating those sort of those government officials that have to put these things in place, talk to me about your funding model like I assume that it is the municipality is giving a certain amount of money to you in order to keep this whole operation running. So
William Murdock 04:45
if you really want me to die, I would, but let me, let me tell you this. So MORP C administers a lot of services. You bring up the most important source, which is our local communities invest in us to deliver services. Yeah, that’s only about 9% of our budget. So okay, we receive funding from federal funds, state funds, other nonprofits. We actually receive some from utilities, from philanthropy. We charge some fees for some of the services we do. Okay, so it’s this very diverse set of funding because we’re meeting a whole diverse set of needs for our local governments, and we’re really proud of that, because our local governments invest $1 in us, and we’re generating significantly more back to them to help them deal with these things. We actually, your listeners are familiar with return on investment. We actually issue an ROI statement every year so that if a community gives morepsy $1 we can say, Yeah, you got two and a half dollars back, or whatever the number is, okay, because we want to be good stewards of that public dollar. But now I forget the thread of your question.
Tim Fulton 05:52
Talk through so you set out pillars of like, here’s the things that we are focused on, and I mentioned a couple of the pillars of how you do it, so, policy, data, empowerment, any other pillars that I’m missing there,
William Murdock 06:08
when we mentioned infrastructure and environment? Okay, really important. You know, I think a thing that I don’t want to get too nebulous, but one of the things that we really believe in, and again, it’ll sound like a talking point, because we really believe this region can get better as it gets bigger. It’s a great place to live. I’ve spent most of my life here. I think you have too, but we’ve seen it change and we’ve seen it get better, but we also know that there are these parts of the community, parts of our infrastructure, parts of the services we have that aren’t on par. They’re not good enough. Some people are being left behind. Why? I mentioned that is, when we’re looking at programs, we want to make sure that we have this ambition to lift the whole community up as we’re growing, to look for those ways we can really kind of reach what did Casey Kasem say? Reach for the keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars, right? That’s not a that’s not been a part of Midwestern culture here. But I really think Columbus is starting to do that. We’re like, Well, yeah, we we want to fix our roads and bridges and make it safe, but yeah, we want a world class transit system, and yeah, we want passenger rail. And I mentioned those things because more sees whole ethos working with our communities is, yeah, we should. We should focus on the basics, but we shouldn’t be afraid to really try to elevate people’s expectations about the community. So I think, I don’t know if that’s too esoteric. We really believe that
Tim Fulton 07:31
a little bit more brass tacks, because I think people have a bit of confusion on you. Don’t fix roads and bridges. We don’t right, so don’t build things. How do you get roads and bridges fixed? Is it a lot like these are just guesses aligning federal grant dollars with a municipality in order to, like, make that happen? Or do they do? Or do you just point them in the right direction?
William Murdock 07:57
So that’s a great question. So part of what we do, and you’ve talked to our data people, yeah, we engage the community. We bring data and modeling of traffic flows and all of that information you need to make good decisions. And then we bring our local communities together, and we help them prioritize, whether it’s federal funds or state funds to build and fix roads, to build trails to do these, these really important projects. So the role that we play is important because we bring people together and we give them the good information to help them with their decisions. So I don’t get to pick where the highway goes right. Don’t get to pick the project, but I get to help make sure that our public officials have that information. They know where the community stands. They know what the latest trends are. They know what the business community thinks, and there’s a lot of value in that. And just helping, helping the community feel good about the decisions they’re making.
Tim Fulton 08:55
Can you talk about some of the initiatives that you guys are focused on right
William Murdock 08:59
now? Well, we talked a lot about transportation, yeah, if we can keep going on that, yeah, morpc was a big partner in link us, so that initiative on transit and sidewalks and trails that is moving from that planning and imagination phase into actual implementation, okay? And our team is spending a lot of time, of course, supporting our partners at Coda as they’re working on things like bus rapid transit. But we’re also helping our communities determine which trails and sidewalks to invest in. It’s about $60 million a year the first five years, it’s 150 miles of projects. That’s something that we’re working with communities on the timing, the locations, and then this is a permanent program, so we’re working on that next year projects. There’s a lot of feedback, a lot of discussions on that. That’s that’s one of the big things we’re working on. Okay? We’re also working on passenger rail. I don’t know if it’s okay to jump into that. Sure. So. So I think if you grew up in Columbus, you know, we haven’t had a train here since 1979 we’re the largest region in the country that doesn’t have any sort of fixed rail, and that’s a competitive disadvantage, and it’s really annoying if you want a different way to get around. Yeah, and so we’re working to fix that. And there are two lines that are coming through Columbus that we’re evaluating. One is called 3c, and D, so that Cleveland, Columbus, state and Cincinnati, and then another one called Midwest Connect, which is Pittsburgh, Columbus, Lima fort, Wayne, Chicago. The important thing about that is it could make the central Ohio region a hub for rail. So instead of a stop on the way to somewhere else, we’d have options. But the bigger thing is, I mentioned the major cities, but there are cities in between, your newarks, your marysvilles, your Delawares, your Dublins, who could really benefit from this, and we’re really focused on bringing passenger rail service to not just Columbus, but the communities of Central Ohio in a new way. So we’re about to move from the first step of the federal process into the second step. There’s a lot of coordination efforts to build support for that, to get ready for that analysis, so that we can make the case here in about two years for federal funds to actually build it. Okay. So that’s transportation. Okay. And how do you pause and take a breath there and see?
Tim Fulton 11:25
Well, I guess my Yeah, so everything goes perfectly, yes. How far away are we from being able to buy a ticket? Oh, gosh, for
William Murdock 11:35
passenger rail? Yeah. So if you look at the federal process, it’ll be about two years for what’s called step two. Step two answers those questions that everybody has, which is, how fast where will the stations be? How much will it cost? How frequently will it run? At the end of those two years, is when we start talking about capital costs. Our best guess would be somewhere in the first half of the 2030s okay, if every if all the stars align, and the good news is it’s 2026, so that’s not as far as way as it seems.
Tim Fulton 12:11
Yeah, and so are you guys. Then the spearhead for it, like everything else, sort of feeds into you
William Murdock 12:17
for this. At this point, we’re the, the lead for the projects that called that’s called Midwest connect, okay? And we’re working with the state on their project, which is 3c and D, okay, but this region, this region, wants this, yeah, done, surveys that show over 80% support, and so we’ve taken a leadership role in ensuring that the steps you need to do before you build it and run it, are being taken care of, and we’ve got great support from our communities to do that. So that’s that’s more of these role right now, more she’s not going to build a train, we’re not going to run a road, but we’re going to get the community set up. So ready to do
Tim Fulton 12:56
that. And how taking it back a little bit more high level. How do you guys make choices about where to focus your resources? Obviously, you’re big, but they are still finite.
William Murdock 13:07
Yeah, I mean, we those buckets. We talked about transportation, and I just mentioned those high level projects. Morphe plays a really important role in helping prioritize funding for highways, roads, bridges, safety projects, all of that. There’s a lot of work that happens there. So when we think about priorities, we have to deliver on those basics. But that’s not where we want to stop. We want to make sure we’re reaching for these bigger things, like supporting link us, like passenger rail. We’ve picked those because those are the most impactful when we think about the difference it can make in people’s lives and the economic benefit and all of those things. We also do a lot in the environmental space, and that’s focused on the types of resources and the types of things that our communities want to do. So when we’re trying to decide what to do, we got to talk to our communities, okay? Because at our heart, we have 90 communities in central Ohio who are depending on us and asking us to do things. So we have to make sure there’s things that they support too. Do you?
Tim Fulton 14:11
This is super just curious. You’re I would think that the city of Columbus gives more resources to you guys than the City of Newark, yes, okay,
William Murdock 14:23
yes. And Columbus is a incredible partner, but so so is Newark. And right, depending on the program, they invest different amounts of money on a per capita basis,
Speaker 1 14:33
based on how much that program may even affect them, or they take advantage of it, like if I imagine Newark uses your data, but if they didn’t, maybe there would be less resources they would need to dedicate to MORP C kind
William Murdock 14:47
of, sort of, okay. So depending on the types of services we can provide, communities invest different things, okay, but there’s that basic level of participation that all of the 90 communities that work with us are. Have access to data. Actually, they have access to our policy information, some of our work in air and water. Okay, so everybody gets some, but some communities, depending on the service, we do a whole lot more with
Tim Fulton 15:13
talk to me then about how you come to consensus on how to make decisions about because you, you’re, you have a board. We do over 170 public officials. They don’t make do they make every decision on behalf of those 90, like the brass tax decisions about like, how are we going to Newark has a request, but it’s sort of taking away resources from something happening in Columbus, how do you balance that and then also come to consensus with different sizes of communities?
William Murdock 15:51
So that’s a great question. And so the joke is that the M in MORP C stands for meetings, Lord, we have a lot, and the C stands for committees. And what I mean by that is we have over 50 working groups, committees, boards, all different types of issues. And what we do is we bring the public together. We bring these communities together. And so much work happens in those those committees, those working groups, so that by the time it gets to that larger board, a lot of the details have been worked out, and I think it’s really important that our organization really functions on collaboration. It functions well in consensus. And so when you get to that that board of 170 officials, yeah, a lot of the details have already been worked out, but there’s a lot of work that happens below below that. So
Tim Fulton 16:45
I can think about it in terms of a committee is going to dive into an issue, the committee is going to come up with a solution for this issue. The committee is going to make a recommendation. The full board doesn’t have to accept it, and I imagine there are some things that the committee just gets to do on its own right? Yeah. Like, should I think of about it like Congress, basically, oh,
William Murdock 17:06
Lord, please do not Congress, with all due respect to our congressional officials, yes, we much different type of bodies. So I think a good way to think about it is, we’ll pick an example. Say we’re working in water. So water resources, whether it’s looking at supply and demand or conservation areas, we have something called the central Ohio Water Advisory Council, okay? And so that’s a subgroup of the commission that has some working groups that will focus on, you know, where the data goes on this, or water policies, it’ll feed up to that. There’s a lot of discussion. Our team informs it, and sometimes they can make decisions or recommendations. Other times it’ll flow up through the rest of the committee structure, and I’ll get to the Commission for adoption. So it depends on on the issue, but that’s there’s just, there’s a lot of a lot of good dialog, a lot of conversation about the types of services we provide, the types of plans, the types of grant funds that flow through us, that we can bring communities together to make those decisions. Got it, I don’t know if that it does my chart, and you want to
Tim Fulton 18:17
see those that was literally my follow up is, is the org chart publicly available? It
William Murdock 18:22
is it is, and it’s, it’s, it’s a thing of beauty, and it we have different types of boards that we service, all sorts of committees and working groups. And honestly, that paints a picture of what morpc does for the region. Yeah. So is, if you wonder, we have data and policy and sustainability, environmental pieces, transportation, that all economic development, that all is, yeah, see it clearly in our board structure. So
Tim Fulton 18:48
back to the work and sort of the the resources you cultivate for communities. Can you give either an example of how a community has leveraged that well, or basically a pitch for how communities could leverage that data better, data and planning? Yeah,
William Murdock 19:09
well, let’s focus on the planning piece. Okay? Because right now, a lot of communities are struggling with housing and whether it’s trying to build more, trying to just deal with the pressures of others trying to build it. A lot of small communities have a ton of pressure on this, and they may not have the staff capacity to do it. So what warpsy does is we can give them data on the population. We’re seeing if there’s a transportation piece, we can show them the traffic flows. But we can also do things like we have a city planners on staff where we can loan out a planner to help them process permits or to update their zoning code or to do whatever. Sometimes we actually can do direct technical assistance, or we have a list of consultants that have been pre approved so they can use a consultant. But basically. If you’re a small community and you’re looking around saying, Gosh, we we have a whole lot of housing pressure right now. And by the way, our person that we have that does this is only part time, they can look to morpc and say, here’s what we’re facing. And depending on what it is, we can give them data. We can give them a person. We can help them find a consultant that’s really powerful, and that that gives them that, that regional effort to lean on when they need the help. So we see that quite a bit.
Tim Fulton 20:29
Can you think of any housing aside, any specific examples of things you guys have helped accomplish that you are
William Murdock 20:36
proud of? Oh my gosh, don’t
Tim Fulton 20:40
I’m so proud of this. You can’t pick one.
William Murdock 20:42
Here’s a program that we’re excited about. So we do, we facilitate what’s called the central Ohio greenways effort, okay, trails, okay. There’s a lot of love for trails in central Ohio. Hundreds of miles are being planned. One of the things that we do is we have the Greenway planning studio, okay? And so if a community is looking for assistance on designing a trail, figuring out how to navigate community issues with a trail mapping, we can actually give them technical assistance on that. And a way that that manifests is in a program called trail towns. So if you think about a trail going through a small town or an urban neighborhood, there’s so much economic opportunity that’s available, and we’ve gone in, and we can do trail town plans, where it’s how can small businesses participate, and how can you accommodate the horde of Pelotonia riders coming through, practicing and make it work for your community. So whether it’s Sunbury or galena or London or communities in between, we’ve we’ve been able to do that on the ground, and we’re really proud of that. That’s a that’s something we’re actually looking to build on, because there’s so much enthusiasm for it.
Tim Fulton 21:56
Where does morpc Sit in terms of cuts to perceived cuts in federal funding, things in terms of what’s happening with the state budget. Do you guys help the your first of all, where do you sit? And then the follow up is going to be, do you have any involvement in assisting municipalities and making sure they’re getting the funding they still need,
William Murdock 22:21
and we’ll actually take those in reverse order. Okay, so morphsy has a really robust policy group, so we bring communities of all sizes together. There’s a theme here in what we call our regional policy roundtable, and they look at federal and state issues. They focus in on some of the funding or policy changes, and first we try to inform, then we try to figure out the points where we can agree that we can lean in on. And part of that is identifying projects that we can support, programs that we think could be better, that we support. So there’s a lot of activity on that, I think, with the current state of cuts and things we’re watching that really carefully. A lot of our communities are trying to navigate that. Yeah, you know, there’s been a shift away from some things that were We were involved in, like electric vehicle charging locations. Okay, certainly there’s been a shift away from that. There’s still a big focus on infrastructure. Yes, you know different, focus on the environment, but still, we think a lot of support and interest in things like water infrastructure. So what I’m getting at is there’s a lot of shifting that’s happening right now. Part of our role is to help communities navigate it and still make sure that their needs are, you know, being articulated at that level. So I don’t know if that answers,
Tim Fulton 23:39
yeah, absolutely it does. I mean, it is a it is a it is a shifting landscape, and that’s the the politest and probably the most correct way to say it as well. Talk to me about how communities individuals can get more involved with morpc or take advantage of your resources themselves.
William Murdock 23:59
So I think there are a couple ways. Okay, so we have a program that so we do a lot of direct services and housing too. If you’re in Franklin County and you know somebody who needs help with their furnace, their house is needs repair, please recommend them to us. Please connect them to us. The biggest challenge we have with these programs is they’re under subscribed, which is wild. There are people. We have the data. We know that there are families out there who are struggling with utility bills, who have on safe furnaces. We can help them, and it’s free. So getting the word out that’s that’s important. On the whole other end of the spectrum, we have so many data, so many things on our data portal, maps, if you want to geek out, if you want to learn where projects are, if you want to look at demographic population information, if you want to look at live sensors that are monitoring air quality all over Central Ohio, that’s all available and it’s. It’s free to the public. So that’s something we encourage you dig in on the data, and the last thing we’re the Regional Planning Commission. There are some really big decisions being made in transportation funding, and we thrive on people giving us that feedback. So this is something where, if it’s a transportation plan, you can literally draw the route you want on the map or the intersection. That’s a problem, and we have to respond to that, and we have to think about that, so that feedback is really important. So help your neighbor look for data and maps if you need it, and make sure you’re telling us what you think about the future. And those are my three things.
Tim Fulton 25:40
Great. I end every interview with the same two questions, okay, what do you think Central Ohio is doing well, and what do you think it’s not doing so well?
William Murdock 25:48
Oh, gosh, that’s great. Great question. Let’s, let’s focus first on what we’re not doing well, because I want to end, okay, positive note. There’s so much going on in housing, so much discussion. A lot of our communities are really navigating through this, trying to figure out how to build housing, but it’s not enough. And when we look at other regions the size of the Columbus region, they’re building more. They’re doing better on this than we are. That’s something that we’re not doing well enough. There’s a lot of good people. Our team is working on this. We know there’s a lot of partnerships coming together on this. That’s something we’re not doing well, that we got to do better. Okay, what are we doing? Well, I think this is a welcoming place. I really do it’s a welcoming place that has ambition. And I don’t think it’s untethered ambition. I think it’s really smart. And you look at this community, when we look at net migration into the region, it’s strong. People want to be here. People have an energy here that feels still like our best days are in front of us. And you see that with the vote of confidence in something like link us, which is really a big vote in confidence for the future. I think, I think if you’re looking at what we do well, we’re really doing well at thinking about how to invest in the future and to bring new people along with us. And I’m really proud to be a part of that great Mr. Murdoch, thanks for your time. Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it. Yep.
Tim Fulton 27:31
for listening to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast. Com, please rate, subscribe, share this episode of The confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite planner. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info, at the confluence cast.com, our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host. Tim Fulton, have a great week. You
