How to Engage Your Transportation Agency

I just read "A Citizen's Guide to Better Streets: How to Engage Your Transportation Agency", which I downloaded for free from Project for Public Spaces. This book is the first of a three part series about how streets and transportation systems impact urban communities.

This book is like a primer for understanding how to use the State D.O.T to help build what the citizens actually want.  The first thing that the book does is lay out the case for why people should be interested in understanding the transportation and planning profession.  The largest expenditures local, state and regional governments undertake are often transportation related projects.  These projects shape our landscapes and then our lives, but few people outside of the profession participate in making the decisions.

The book explains the values, goals and assumptions that are fundamental to the planning industry.  These values and goals, as well as the terminology and processes that are part of turning the goals into completed projects are foreign to the average citizen.  And for those of us who are trying to create a more likable, walkable downtown, the textbook goals of the planning profession may be directly at odds with our goals.

The tone of the book is far from judgmental about the planning profession, however.  The authors just want to explain how the rules work so we can be part of the game.

Two weeks ago, I attended a Public Workshop on Wilmington's Downtown Circulation Study.  Honestly, the name is enough to keep most people away, and it did!  Nevertheless Wilmapco, our regional trasportation planning authority, gave a few attenders an overview of the problems the study was hoping to address and possible goals that might be formed as a result.  I wish I had read the Citizen's Guide before attending the meeting.  I would have known what L.O.S. was and why there is so much emphasis on it and I would have gotten a process started in my neighborhood in advance of the meeting to improve the quality of our input.  As I learned from the book, these preliminary public workshops offer a better chance for citizens to be heard than already funded transportation projects.