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