This section proposes a number of steps for communities to take in responding to a specific transportation project.
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Citizen-Generated Design Plans In "Citizen-Generated Design Plans," Donal R. Simpson describes a process whereby communities hired their own design professional to help them to develop design plans that "successfully bridge the communications gap between citizens and highway agencies... Independent technical assistance can help the community articulate its desired and positions....define the community values that the road design must respect and protect. It also should deal with the functional requirements of the roadway and propose technical changes or design exceptions required for the road to fit into the community. more...
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Community Impact Assessment
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Public Involvement: What the Public Wants "Some clear directions emerge ... from our citizen focus groups: ... people respond to being addressed personally and politely; it works to ... provide a forum where everyone is listened to and ... afforded a response; ... people want to be given a real chance to affect decisions that affect their lives; and finally, it is nice to not only be given a choice but to be given information to help make a reasoned decision ...
What is not so clear is when to involve people. more...
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Hear Every Voice: A Guide to Public Involvement at Mn/DOT
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Public Involvement Technique: Involve - Small Group Techniques This section describes Mn/DOT's usage of a variety of small group techniques to involve the public in a corridor study. The techniques looked at here are: non-traditional stakeholder's dialogue processes, structured public meetings, and citizen juries. Includes the reasoning behind using these particular public involvement techniques and analyses of their usefulness. more...
from
Hear Every Voice: A Guide to Public Involvement at Mn/DOT
"A civic advisory committee is a representative group of stakeholders that meets regularly to discuss issues of common concern. While these groups are often called citizens' advisory committees, the term civic is sometimes used, since citizenship is not a requirement for participation. Civic advisory committees (CACs) have been used for many years and are not in themselves innovative, yet they can be used very creatively. For example, a CAC was used in Louisiana to find consensus on environmental issues for input to public agencies. In Florida a CAC advised on designs for deployment of a traffic information system. Read more about Why are they useful? Who participates? and how? How do agencies use the output? What are the basic features? Who leads it? How is it organized? Contact these Transportation Authorities for information about their CACs.
"Generating ideas is one of the most important parts of CSD ... CS solutions must be developed by drawing on our citizens and agency colleagues to generate ideas for possible solutions and contribute to the solution."
