About Us

COG is the one place in metropolitan Washington that regularly brings leaders together to develop solutions to the region's major challenges. COG prepares plans enabling the region to receive federal funding, provides members with research and data to inform decision-making, and offers a wide range of programs, including commuter services, cooperative purchasing, technical assistance and grants, and public outreach campaigns.

Transportation

Through the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), area officials, planners, and engineers ensure a well-managed and maintained transportation system. The TPB, which is staffed by COG, conducts the federally mandated transportation planning process for the region and ensures the uninterrupted flow of federal transportation funds that area jurisdictions receive.

Environment

COG's work engages leaders in various environmental fields from water quality experts to climate scientists. Together, they are advancing regional efforts to restore local waterways, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change, promote recycling, and enhance and preserve green space and agriculture.

Community

Area officials and experts, including planning and housing directors and child welfare and health officials, work together with their counterparts at COG to help shape stronger communities throughout the region.

Homeland Security & Public Safety

COG brings police chiefs, fire chiefs, emergency managers, and other leaders together as part of its work to strengthen regional public safety coordination, homeland security planning, and emergency communication.

Transportation

TPB Vision

The Vision is a short, but influential, policy document that lays out eight broad goals to guide the region’s transportation investments into the 21st century. The Vision was unanimously approved in October 1998 by the Transportation Planning Board after an extensive public outreach effort that lasted three years.

A host of objectives and strategies are included in the Vision to show how its eight primary goals can be reached. For example, Goal 4 in the Vision calls for the use of technology to maximize the effectiveness of the transportation system. A strategy in the Vision, which supports this goal, calls for a unified, technology-based method of payment—something like a “smart card”—for all transit, public parking and toll roads in the region.

The Vision is not a plan with maps or lists of specific projects. It is fundamentally a framework to guide decision making. The various jurisdictions in the region are expected to pursue policies and projects that contribute to specific elements of the Vision. The goals, objectives and strategies in the Vision should be used to buttress arguments for or against new policies and projects.

Amid the diverse needs and opinions in the region, the Vision emphasizes the commonality of our values. It is a symbol of regional consensus. Although the TPB does not directly select projects in most cases, the power of consensus reflected in the Vision can affect the kinds of projects that the states and other jurisdictions choose to pursue. And ultimately, the TPB has to approve those projects through the CLRP and the TIP.

TPB Vision Statement

In the 21st Century, the Washington metropolitan region remains a vibrant world capital, with a transportation system that provides efficient movement of people and goods. This system promotes the region's economy and environmental quality, and operates in an attractive and safe setting--it is a system that serves everyone. The system is fiscally sustainable, promotes areas of concentrated growth, manages both demand and capacity, employs the best technology, and joins rail, roadway, bus, air, water, pedestrian and bicycle facilities into a fully interconnected network.