Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Program

What is the Metropolitan Planning Organization program?
A Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is the policy board of an organization created and designated to carry out the metropolitan transportation planning process.

MPOs are required to represent localities in all urbanized areas (UZAs) with populations over 50,000, as determined by the U.S. Census.

MPOs are designated by agreement between the governor and local governments that together represent at least 75 percent of the affected population or in accordance with procedures established by applicable state or local law.









The Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) is a minimum four-year program of transportation projects and strategies formally implementing the MPO transportation plan.

At the conclusion of each state fiscal year, MPOs are required to publish a listing of projects that that were either authorized or revised to increase or decrease obligations in the previous year. The list must include both FHWA (highway-based) and FTA (transit-based) projects.
The primary role of the MPO is to review the data, and to organize it into a report. Data is available through the MPO Portal, using the Report option. ALDOT will assist the MPOs in accessing the MPO Portal and will review the report for completeness.

Regulation Description
  23 CFR 450.334(a) Report due December 31st
  23 CFR 450.334(b) Report should include a project listing
  23 CFR 450.334(b) Report must have the following column headers: Engineer Estimate, Fed. Obligated, Fed. Expenditure, Balance
  23 CFR 450.334(c) Report should be posted to website
PDF document icon Memo 2022-15 Report should be a standalone document and include a narrative


Each Metropolitan Planning Organization must approve a Unified Planning Work Program annually.








Date Activity Responsible Party
September 1st Adopt Unified Planning Work Program MPO
September 1st Adopt Work Program RPO
Mid-September Federal Management Information System (FMIS) shuts down for Federal close-out FHWA


For questions pertaining to the MPO Program contact James F. Boyer, P.E. at 334.242.6728.