Basemap at AMPO 2026: What We Learned in Sacramento

What we learned at AMPO 2026

We recently attended the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO) Annual Conference in Sacramento, California.

AMPO has continued to grow in recent years, with more than 600 delegates attending this year’s conference. It was great to catch up with familiar faces, meet MPOs from across the United States and hear more about the challenges they are facing and the different approaches being taken to address them.

As a couple of Brits attending a major US planning conference, we were also struck by just how welcoming the AMPO community was. From conversations on the exhibition floor to the social events and sessions, people were incredibly open about sharing their work, challenges and ideas.

Across a packed programme, three themes particularly stood out to us: the relationship between housing and transportation, the growing use of AI in planning, and the importance of accessibility analysis.

Starting with Sacramento itself

The week began with a tour of two of Sacramento's major sports venues.

First was Sutter Health Park, home of the Sacramento River Cats and the temporary home of Major League Baseball's Athletics. One particularly interesting discussion focused on how people leave the stadium after games. Despite concerns that MLB crowds would cause significant congestion, improved walking connections into downtown Sacramento have helped provide alternatives to driving.

We then visited Golden 1 Center, the downtown home of the Sacramento Kings. Opened in 2016, the arena has played an important role in the regeneration of downtown Sacramento.

The venue itself was particularly impressive. Golden 1 Center is 100% solar powered, with energy generated through rooftop solar panels and a nearby solar farm, and it was the first indoor sports venue to achieve LEED Platinum certification.

From a transport perspective, the shared control facilities were equally interesting, including the ability to coordinate traffic signals to help manage congestion around major events.

How accessible was the conference?

The AMPO conference itself was held at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in downtown Sacramento.

Its central location, public transport connections and walkable surroundings made it a useful example of how the location of a destination can influence sustainable travel choices.

We decided to explore this further using journey-time analysis, mapping where delegates could reach within 60 minutes by public transport from the convention centre.

The analysis showed strong accessibility across the main Sacramento urban area, alongside longer-distance connections using rail, including Amtrak services towards places such as Davis.

It was a simple analysis, but one that neatly illustrated one of the major themes running throughout the conference: it is not enough to know that transport infrastructure exists. What matters is what people can actually reach using it.

Where housing meets transportation

One of the conference tracks we followed closely was Where Housing Meets Transportation.

A recurring message was that housing and transport cannot be planned independently.

Several presentations demonstrated how areas with comparatively low housing costs can also experience much higher transport costs because residents need to travel further or are more dependent on private cars.

That means housing affordability cannot simply be judged by the price of the property.

A lower-cost home can be offset by higher transport expenditure and longer journeys to employment, education, healthcare and other essential services. For households already under financial pressure, the combination can significantly increase the overall cost of accessing opportunities.

This is something we see repeatedly through accessibility analysis: proximity is not the same as accessibility.

Understanding where people can realistically travel, using the modes available to them and within reasonable journey times, gives planners a much clearer picture of whether proposed housing is genuinely connected to opportunity.

AI is becoming part of the planning toolkit

Another recurring theme was artificial intelligence and automation.

Rather than AI being discussed simply as an emerging technology, there were practical examples of MPOs looking at how it could improve existing planning workflows.

One example was a project application tool demonstrated during the conference. A proposed project could be drawn and automatically assessed against regional planning datasets, producing a report containing the relevant evidence.

For MPOs dealing with hundreds of candidate projects, tools like this have the potential to significantly reduce repetitive analysis.

More importantly, reducing the time required to analyse an individual option makes it possible to test more alternatives.

Instead of spending most of the available time producing evidence for one proposal, planners can potentially compare several scenarios and use the evidence to understand which interventions produce the strongest outcomes.

That is where we think AI and automation can become particularly valuable in transport planning: not replacing planners, but giving them the ability to investigate more options in the same amount of time.

Access is everything

It was fitting that the final conference block was called Access is Everything.

We particularly enjoyed seeing work from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), which demonstrated approaches to measuring access to core services using different transport modes.

What was particularly striking was a question put to the audience about how regularly accessibility analysis was being undertaken.

Only around 20% of the room said they were carrying out accessibility analysis regularly, while roughly 30% indicated that they were not currently considering it.

For us, this was one of the most interesting takeaways from the week.

Transport planning has traditionally concentrated heavily on networks, infrastructure and movement. Accessibility analysis asks a slightly different question:

What does the transport network actually allow people to reach?

Whether assessing new housing, employment, healthcare, education or investment in public transport, answering that question can provide a much stronger link between transportation investment and the outcomes it is intended to deliver.

Great conversations on and off the conference floor

One of the best parts of AMPO was the number of conversations we had throughout the week.

Whether talking to people at our booth, after sessions or during the evening events, we found the AMPO community incredibly welcoming. People were happy to share what they were working on, the challenges they were facing and the different approaches being taken across the country.

For two visitors from the UK, that openness made it particularly easy to get involved and learn more about the US MPO community.

An evening at the California State Railroad Museum gave us another chance to continue those conversations while learning more about the history of rail in California.

There was also the AMPO quiz.

Our knowledge of US state trivia quickly proved to be somewhat limited, although we were considerably more successful when it came to choosing a team name:

Freight Club.

And a few more modes of transport...

We also managed to experience quite a range of American public transport during the trip.

A day in San Francisco alone involved buses, trains, streetcars and metro services.

We considered adding an autonomous Waymo to the list as well. With vehicles seemingly everywhere in the city, it was tempting – until we were quoted more than $30 for a journey of around two miles.

The streetcar won.

Bringing the lessons home

AMPO was a great opportunity to speak directly with MPOs about the challenges they are trying to solve.

The strongest message we took away was that housing, transportation and accessibility are becoming increasingly interconnected.

At the same time, better data, automation and AI are giving planning organisations the opportunity to analyse those relationships in far greater detail.

For Basemap, these are exactly the types of questions we want TRACC to help answer: moving beyond simply mapping transport networks to understand where people can travel, what they can access and how proposed changes could improve those opportunities.

We also came away with a real appreciation for the AMPO community itself. With more than 600 delegates, the conference is clearly continuing to grow, but it still felt open, friendly and easy to engage with.

We left Sacramento with plenty of ideas, new connections and a much better understanding of the challenges MPOs are facing across the US — and we are already looking forward to the next one.