Planning for Transportation in Rural Areas

IV. Successful Rural Transportation Planning

This section provides an overview of issues to be resolved before starting the planning process, success factors and key elements to address for rural transportation plans, and approaches for public consultation and environmental review.

A. Getting Started...Questions to Answer First

Prior to preparing a rural transportation plan, decision-makers should be aware of the time, staff, budget, and other items that will be needed during the process. Preparing the transportation plan is a major undertaking. The best transportation plans will be the result of considerable effort during the preparation process. Extensive planning and thought will also be needed to successfully implement the process.

The answers to the questions listed below will help design your transportation planning process. Before beginning, decision-makers and staff should address the issues raised in each question. Planning for and addressing these questions will help ensure that adequate time and resources have been dedicated to the rural transportation planning effort.

• How much of your staff will be available to work on the transportation plan? What will their role(s) be in the project? What types of experience have they had with transportation planning? How knowledgeable are they about environmental regulations? If little is known about transportation planning and environmental regulations, staff may need training.
• What are the capacities of your community's public works/traffic engineering departments? How experienced or ready are they to engage in planning. Perhaps outside assistance will be required to provide some of these services.
• How much budget has your jurisdiction allocated for preparing the transportation plan? Will your community have additional funds available if needed to complete the plan? Public participation will be constrained by budget. Identifying budget amounts will help you select from the various types of public involvement. Schedule activities to allow enough time for public participants to complete their tasks.

B. Success Factors

The rural transportation planning process involves formalizing a decision-making structure to make informed choices that will ensure the best possible rural transportation system in the future, given available resources. The planning process will specify what the "best possible" system looks like.

Below are key success factors to strive for when developing a rural transportation plan. A rural transportation plan should:

• Set the overall transportation direction for the rural area and define the transportation future/vision to plan toward.
• Provide a decision-making structure, incorporating a participatory public involvement process, to plan and prioritize improvements to the rural transportation system.
• Build on existing knowledge, resources, and information to conduct technical analysis including evaluation of current and future conditions, forecasts, and trends.
• Balance multiple and competing stakeholder objectives and funding expectations.
• Identify and provide long-range funding program.
• Provide a framework to prioritize expenditures based on policy goals and objectives.
• Focus short range investments on long term goals.
• Provide accountability to customers on future direction and actions to get there.

Developing a rural transportation plan that addresses these success factors will help ensure that the significant energy involved in developing the plan will be worthwhile.

C. Public Consultation and Rural Transportation Planning

Public participation is a critical element of the rural transportation planning processes. It provides a structure in which citizens can develop an understanding of the state and regional transportation systems and how they operate. Successful rural planning requires a public consultation process that is proactive and provides complete information, provides timely public notices, and provides opportunities for early and continuous participation. Early issue identification and cooperative solution-building can reduce the potential for conflict later in the process.

Success factors for implementing an effective and inclusive public consultation process include:

• Selecting the public involvement mechanisms that are right for your situation.
• Establishing reasonable timelines.
• Considering the cost effectiveness of different techniques.
• Coordinating and streamlining public involvement activities.
• Showing that input is considered seriously.
• Building balanced and broad-based public involvement.
• Ensuring staff has the skills necessary to obtain input on needs and present plan ideas.

The public involvement process provides for communication among all parties involved through public meetings, forums, and workshops. Citizens have access to information, plans, and programs for review and comment.

Key decisions to be made when designing your public consultation approach include:

• Who will conduct it and when? Roles should be specified in terms of who will conduct the public consultation and when. Effective public consultation will involve seeking input at key decision points in the process and allowing for public participation to determine transportation issues and solutions. Many rural areas have established community initiatives that can be used to help channel communication.
• How will input from local officials be included? An important requirement of TEA-21 is that input from local officials must be included in the statewide planning process of which the rural transportation plan is an important part. How input from local officials is to be included should be established early in the planning process and documented.

The broad goals for public participation include keeping people informed and involved on a continual basis and facilitating cooperation and consensus building. Some of the public participation related responsibilities in developing rural transportation plans include:

• Establishing and maintaining a mailing list of all known parties interested in transportation in the region.
• Providing reasonable notice and opportunity to comment on issues and draft documents.
• Issuing press releases and public service announcements to provide timely notices of regional and state transportation planning activities to the public.
• Making an effort to understand and consider the needs of those persons or groups that may be considered underserved by existing transportation systems, such as low-income and minority households, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and student population which may face difficulties accessing employment and other amenities.
• Seeking out representatives from all transportation modes including pedestrians, bicycles, buses, trains, commercial vehicles, and airports.
• Periodically evaluating the effectiveness of the rural public involvement process to ensure that the process provides full and open access to all and revising the process as necessary.
• Holding public meetings, open forums, visioning sessions, workshops, or open houses at key points for input on:
• Initiating the rural transportation planning process.
• Development of policies, goals, and objectives.
• Identification of transportation issues.
• Development of alternatives.
• Draft transportation plan.
• Updates of the plan.

1. Types of Involvement

Public involvement comes in many forms. Typically involvement comes from: outreach, data-gathering, and public participation. These broad categories can often overlap, with the understanding that their application to the planning process varies according to when they are used in the planning process.

• Outreach. Outreach is useful for informing people about a topic or issue. This type of participation includes but is not limited to personal contact, media, filed offices or drop-in centers, citizen boards, and speaker bureaus. The outreach can be two-way, such as open discussions at a drop-in center. One-way delivery of information can also be used, such as bill-stuffers or news releases, or one-way receiving of information such as a telephone comment line. Outreach techniques are particularly appropriate for use both during the early steps in the process and as a way to keep the public informed while the plan is formulated.
• Data-gathering. Data-gathering techniques are important for transportation plan development. Examples of data-gathering participation methods are questionnaires, individual interviews, advisory committees, and surveys. Data-gathering techniques allow planners to obtaining information from the public at large or selected groups (stakeholders, elected officials, specific focus groups, and so on). Surveys are the primary method used to gather this data, and the cost for performing the techniques varies greatly according to the level of distribution and tools used to administer the survey (newspaper insert versus visual preference testing, for example). Data-gathering techniques are useful when alternatives are being considered and analyzed as a means to collect public opinion.

Keep in mind that special techniques may also be appropriate for stimulating more participation. The public has grown very used to certain types of public involvement techniques. Introducing new or unusual public involvement techniques will help keep the process interesting and, hopefully, the ideas flowing. Examples of such techniques include sponsorship of special events such as transportation fairs, site visits, kiosks, videos, and so on. It is often effective to piggy-back plan related activities with ongoing community activities such as meetings of community groups, other organization newsletters, school activities, and so on.

Whatever techniques are implemented, take time at the end of the public involvement process to ask participants two key questions: what were some of the things they liked about the techniques(s), and what were some of the things that can be done better next time. This will help keep the process relevant and useful for all participants.

2. Transportation Action Model

The Transportation Action Model (TAM), initiated and designed by a national consortium led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is specifically designed for communities with a population of approximately 5,000 to 10,000. The TAM seeks to involve citizens at a grassroots level to plan for the future of their community. It was created with two guiding principles. First, sound transportation systems and the decisions behind them are critical to the social and economic well-being of communities. Second, informed community participation creates better transportation decisions.

The process, through a series of ten steps (including four meetings), facilitates improved understanding of, and involvement in, transportation planning by rural officials and citizens. The process is based upon a vision of transportation's future in the area as developed by the area's leaders and citizens through a "facilitated involvement effort" rather than upon traditional technical transportation planning procedures.

The TAM is a highly structured, 21-week process that includes creating public dialogue, identifying transportation issues, and developing solutions. Successful completion of the program should provide a blueprint for local action. Although it is specifically designed to address transportation problems, it intends to take a more integrated approach to identifying a community's needs and vision for its future.

More information on the Transportation Action Model (RRD 174) is available from:

North Central Regional Center for Rural Development
404 East Hall, Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011-1070
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/rdev/

3. Systematic Development of Informed Consent

Some states have been using the Systematic Development of Informed Consent (SDIC) process, developed by Hans and Annemarie Bleiker of the Institute for Participatory Management and Planning, to help guide them in comprehensive public involvement planning. SDIC seeks to: 1) establish the public agency's legitimate role by casting its program as one aimed at problem-solving; and 2) communicate to the public the serious nature of the problem the agency is attempting to address. The premise of the SDIC process is that accomplishing these two objectives, in combination with a thorough public involvement process, will allow an agency to achieve informed consent. Informed consent is usually far short of unanimous support or consensus. It is, however, enough of an agreement such that each interest or individual with the capability of vetoing a proposed course of action is persuaded that they can live with the consequences.

The SDIC process identifies 15 citizen participation objectives aimed at developing informed consent. They are grouped into three categories: Responsibility Objectives, Responsiveness Objectives, and Effectiveness Objectives. It is critical to an effectively designed and administered public involvement program to ensure that the techniques and methods of involvement are connected to the objective that needs to be achieved.

More information about the SDIC process can be obtained by contacting:

The Institute for Participatory Management and Planning
P.O. Box 1937
Monterey, CA 93942
http://www.ipmp-bleiker.com/

4. Process for Involving Local Elected Officials

In the 1990's, the federal government's surface transportation programs underwent a significant restructuring. These statutory changes began with ISTEA in 1991, and carried through into the 1998 reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs in TEA-21. Prominent among the programs was changes to metropolitan and statewide planning processes. These changes include revised language addressing the long-standing requirements for involving local officials in both (1) planning transportation systems, and (2) programming the use of federal-aid funds at least three years into the future for highway and transit purposes, consistent with the long range plans.

Outside metropolitan areas (i.e. in rural areas), the state DOTs are required to conduct their statewide planning and programming "in consultation with" local officials, and to make decisions about spending certain federal-aid funds "in cooperation with" local officials. No particular methods or structures are required in the law or related regulations for accomplishing these consultations and cooperative activities.

There is a wide range of approaches in place in different states that meet this requirement. Regardless of the approach used, it is important that how input from local officials is to be included be established early in the planning process and documented. There are a number of benefits of involving local stakeholders in rural transportation planning, including:

• Increased trust in government. This benefit is greatest when the consultation process is viewed as fair, open, inclusive, timely, and legitimate.
• Better plans and programs. Consultation frequently identifies new needs and better ideas for meeting needs, especially ideas from outside the transportation field itself.
• Stronger support for implementing plans and programs. Local official involvement in the planning and programming process frequently helps to improve the implementation record.
• Improved performance of transportation systems and better outcomes for people. Feedback from local officials can help keep track of the performance of the transportation system in addition to its contributions to improving outcomes for people in terms of accessibility, social justice, livability, safety and economic vitality, and opportunity in rural America.

A useful resource that provides insights on public involvement coordination and the involvement of public officials in the rural transportation planning process is the Federal Transit Administration's Planning Guidelines for Coordinated State and Local Specialized Transportation Services.

D. Key Transportation Planning Elements to Address

A key decision for your rural planning process is to determine the network of transportation facilities to be addressed by the plan and to identify the other plans with which coordination needs to take place. Successful rural transportation planning should address the following important planning elements:

1.System Performance and Preservation

• Methods to address under- and overutilized facilities.
• Preservation of rights-of-way.^[7]
• Transportation needs identified through analysis of existing/future conditions.
• Methods to expand and enhance transit services.

2.Mobility and Access for People and Goods

• Enhancement of freight movement.
• Long range mobility needs for persons and goods.
• Border crossings and access to intermodal facilities and major activity centers.
• Connectivity between State and local roads that support rural economic growth.
• Bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

3. Environment and Quality of Life

• Recreational travel and tourism.
• Overall social, economic, and environmental effects of transportation decisions.
• Effect of transportation decisions on land use and land development.
• Transportation enhancements.

4. Planning Coordination

• Coordination with local government officials and Indian tribal governments.
• Local, county, metropolitan, and state transportation plans.
• Environmental and land use plans and regulations.

As a guide for developing rural transportation plans, the basic steps used to develop statewide transportation plans are presented in Appendix A. The steps outlined are not to be considered prescriptive, nor are they required. Each rural transportation planning process is unique and should be tailored to best meet local circumstances and needs.

E. Incorporating Environmental Review

Beyond the planning stage, environmental considerations play an important role in the development of a rural transportation project. Only when a proposed transportation project can be shown to not adversely affect the environment, or have its impact avoided, minimized or mitigated, can a transportation project advance into the construction phase of the STIP. Most Federal and state laws, rules and regulations, and policies relating to transportation attest to the importance of maintaining the quality of the environment. Therefore, it is useful to have a general understanding of the region's environment, as well as state and federal environmental regulations and requirements, when developing transportation plans.

It is useful in the early stage of plan development to compile existing information on the study area environment as part of the base on which the proposed regional transportation improvements will be superimposed. This will, at a broad level, allow planners to understand the likelihood of any potential adverse impacts associated with construction. Areas of concern include the potential impact on air quality, land use, noise levels, water quality, wetlands, flood plains, threatened and endangered wildlife, historical and archaeological sites, and hazardous materials sites. Where possible, identification of sites where proposed transportation improvements may potentially impact the environment or are presumed to be environmentally sensitive should be highlighted for more detailed analysis. It is important to note that the potential environmental impact of a plan development should not, in and of itself, be the reason to remove a project from the proposed rural transportation plan.

If it is determined that a project from the rural transportation plan is to be proposed for construction using federal funds, it is required that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) be followed. It is within these NEPA documents that various alternatives and mitigation measures relating to environmental concerns will be fully addressed. The findings from an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Study (EIS) are the legal basis that determine if, and under which conditions, a transportation project can be built.

The Environmental Guidebook produced by FHWA in November 1999 is a useful resource for understanding environmental regulations and environmental review as it relates to transportation planning. The guidebook is available on the World Wide Web at environment.fhwa.dot.gov/guidebook.

Contact

Spencer Stevens, spencer.stevens@dot.gov, 717-221-4512