Transportation Planning and Public Participation

Transportation Planning and Public Involvement: Theory, Process, and Practice explains why, and then how, transportation professionals can treat public involvement as an opportunity to improve their projects and identify problems before they do real damage. Using fundamental principles based on extensive project-based research, the book helps readers re-think their expectations regarding the project process. It shows how public perspectives can be appropriately 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 identifies and demonstrates the tradeoffs of different techniques.

Users 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 involvement process
• Helps readers critically analyze and identify project properties that impact public involvement 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

Researchers and graduate students in Transportation and Urban Planning. Transportation and Urban Planning practitioners and consultants. Transportation and Urban policy makers and public involvement officials

Introduction: Road Map

Part I: Theory
1. The Framing Strategy
2. Public Involvement for Transportation
3. Quantitative Analytic Measures of Public Process Quality Framework

Part II: Process Design
4. Data Needs and Handling
5. Strategies and Tools
6. Representation and Visualization Approaches
7. Feedback Method

Part III: Cases
Conclusion: Institutional Opportunities for Advancing the Quality of Public Involvement