The regional transportation planning program is meant to foster an ongoing transportation planning and decision-making process that actively plans for the improvement of regional transportation systems and coordinates this process among jurisdictions. The goals and objectives of the regional transportation plan should incorporate existing transportation related county-wide planning policies or multicounty transportation related planning policies where adopted and adhere to the following principles:

(1) Build upon applicable portions of the existing local comprehensive plan and process and promote the establishment of a regional perspective into the local comprehensive plan;

(2) Encourage partnerships between federal, state, local and tribal governments, special districts, the private sector, the general public, and other interest groups during conception, technical analysis, policy development, and decision processes in developing, updating, and maintaining the regional transportation plan;

(3) Ensure early and continuous public involvement from conceptual planning through decision making;

(4) Shall be ongoing, and incorporate short and long range multimodal planning activities to address major capacity expansion and operational improvements to the regional transportation system;

(5) Use regionally coordinated, valid and consistent technical methods and data should be used in identifying and analyzing needs;

(6) Consider environmental impacts related to the development of regional transportation policies and facilities and;

(7) Address the policies regarding the coordination of transportation planning among regional jurisdictions, including the relationship between regional transportation planning, local comprehensive planning and state transportation planning.

Within these principles, regions shall develop their own ongoing planning process for the development and refinement of the regional transportation plan, and provide a forum for the discussion of regional transportation planning issues.