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Well-implemented public involvement programs have many potential benefits for transportation agencies including enhanced credibility with the public, decisions reflecting community values, and reduced risks of litigation (O'Connor et al., 2000). The objectives of this study included a broad assessment of the Virginia Department of Transportation's (VDOT's) public involvement practices and the development of a public involvement "toolkit" for use by VDOT staff. The toolkit describes an array of techniques that may be used from the earliest planning stages of transportation projects through their construction, noting advantages, disadvantages, special considerations in the use of each technique, and references and website links for further reading. The assessment of VDOT's current public outreach practices included information gathering from citizens and VDOT staff. A total of 948 citizens attending several types of VDOT meetings and hearings completed written surveys that included questions about how they prefer to be notified about upcoming VDOT meetings, how they prefer to be informed about projects, and how they prefer to be updated on the status of plans or projects. Focus groups and written "self evaluation" surveys provided information on the perceptions of VDOT staff about the effectiveness of VDOT's public involvement approaches and their suggestions for improving communication with the public and public involvement... Study recommendations include the following: VDOT staff should use the toolkit and a soon-to-be released interactive public involvement tool by the Federal Highway Administration to choose effective public involvement approaches; VDOT divisions should collaborate on ways to increase the public's understanding of the planning, project development, and public involvement processes; and as soon as the state budget situation permits, the Outreach Section of VDOT's Office of Public Affairs proposed by the Governor's Commission on Transportation Policy should be staffed to provide greater in-house strategic communications planning and evaluation capability for major projects.
Transportation Planning and Public Participation: Theory, Process, and Practice explains why, and then how, transportation professionals can treat public participation as an opportunity to improve their projects and identify problems before they do real damage. Using fundamental principles based on extensive project-based research and insights drawn from multiple disciplines, the book helps readers re-think their expectations regarding the project process. It shows how public perspectives can be productively solicited, gathered, modeled, and integrated into the planning and design process, guides project designers on how to ask the proper questions and identify strategies, and demonstrates the tradeoffs of different techniques. Readers will find an analytic and evaluation framework - along with process design guidelines - that will help improve the usefulness and applicability of public input. - Shows how to apply quantifiable metrics to the public participation process - Helps readers critically analyze and identify project properties that impact public participation process decisions - Provides in-depth examples that demonstrate how feedback, representation, and decision modeling can be integrated to achieve outcomes - Demonstrates basic principles using examples from a wide range of types and scales - Presents tactics on how to make public meetings more efficient and satisfying by integrating appropriate visualizations
This report from the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2), which is administered by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, describes a framework—including for long-range planning, corridor planning, project programming, environmental review, and environmental permitting— that supports collaborative business practices for reaching decisions on adding highway capacity when necessary.