A regional travel behavior survey being spearheaded by the French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization is aimed at using federal transportation funds more efficiently and beefing up the number of projects than can be completed.

Paul Black, director of the organization, has been meeting with local government entities across the three-county planning district to discuss the benefits of pinpointing travel and transportation behavior specifically in Western North Carolina.

Currently, data used to plan transportation projects in the region comes from a much broader statistics base.

“The worry is we’re over-scoping a lot of projects,” Black told the Haywood County commissioners Monday. “We’re looking for potential to save money, speed up some other projects and get better data on our ...