Background
This e-publication supplements our report GAO-09-868 by presenting the item-by-item results of our Web-based survey
of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO), which was conducted between February 3 and April 1, 2009.
The purpose of the survey was to gather information on the roles and responsibilities of MPOs, the federal oversight of
MPOs, and possible ways to improve regional transportation planning. The questionnaire was designed to obtain demographic
and financial information from MPOs, as well as MPO staff perceptions of challenges their organization faces in carrying
out their current responsibilities. The questionnaire also asked about potential options to address those challenges.
Further, the questionnaire included a section requesting respondents’ views on the current federal oversight of MPOs.
The questionnaire was administered to all 381 MPOs as of February 2009. To establish this list of MPOs, we obtained
contact information from the Department of Transportation and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations;
any inconsistencies between the two lists were reconciled with phone calls to the relevant MPO. We received completed
questionnaires from 86 percent of the MPOs, and the nonrespondents were distributed randomly among different states and sizes of MPOs.
Survey results in this e-publication are presented in two ways. For some questions, we present the survey percentages
for all respondents. For other questions, where relevant and appropriate, we present the survey percentages for three
categories of MPOs. These categories include MPOs with populations less than 200,000 (“small MPOs”), populations
between 200,000 and 999,999 (“medium MPOs”), and MPOs with populations above 1 million (“large MPOs”). In all cases,
the data are presented in aggregate form so that no individual MPO responses can be viewed. See the report referenced
above for a more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology, as well as a discussion of survey results.
We conducted our work from September 2008 to September 2009 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable
basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable
basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
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