In my last post, I shared six tips for using Nextdoor to promote your agency’s survey to effectively engage thousands online. Let’s now turn our attention to the City of Austin’s success story, and how they turned their Nextdoor residents into survey respondents with a well-designed MetroQuest survey.
Facing rapid population growth, America’s number one boom town needed to plan for the city’s transportation future and started the process by engaging the public. In partnership with national firm, Kimley-Horn & Associates, Austin had spectacular success with its MetroQuest survey for the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan (ASMP). In all, the team engaged over 5,100 survey respondents, and using Nextdoor was clearly a great strategy for them.
Liane Miller, Senior Business Process Consultant at the City of Austin recently guest starred in a MetroQuest webinar, where she explained how Nextdoor helped her team expand their reach not only to Nextdoor members but also beyond as members took the information off the platform into their own messages and newsletters, spreading it to their networks.
Nextdoor helped Austin get thousands of visitors to its MetroQuest survey for FREE!
Posting a message to all subscribers of the City of Austin, Liane’s initial post used clear and unambiguous language without jargon or acronyms. It was short, to the point, and included a clear call to action front and center. “Public Feedback Needed!” was stated in the subject line. This post made it easy for people to find the link to the survey as well as the link to the city web page featuring project information. Check out an image of Liane’s first multi-lingual post below.
The follow up post, only a few weeks later, highlighted that thousands of other residents had already weighed in. It asked those who had participated to spread the word, and it invited those who hadn’t provided feedback yet to do so now. Given that only a few days were left, a sense of urgency was created by calling attention to the upcoming closing date right in the subject line: “two more days to share your voice!”
The FREE posts had their desired effect! Two of the three massive jumps in participation numbers correlated to these two posts on Nextdoor. In Liane’s own words, Nextdoor was “really helpful in expanding our reach!” The slide from Liane’s webinar presentation (shown below) highlights MetroQuest participants over time. A third jump, in the middle, is attributed to an employer-based engagement strategy, which Liane discussed in the webinar.
A well-designed survey helped drive high public participation!
Let’s dig a little deeper into the MetroQuest survey itself, and why great design is so important to public participation. To satisfy your curiosity, you can try a demo version of the survey here:
For a bit of background, Austin’s population is expected to double in the coming 30 years. At the time of the survey, the City was in the second phase in the process of developing a transportation plan, called the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan (ASMP), which included mobility-related goals to plan for Austin’s near- and long-term transportation investments. Policies, programs, and projects related to all modes of transportation were included, such as driving, transit, active transportation, and carpooling.
As a first interactive exercise, the survey asked participants to rank their top five out of eight goals: namely, Innovation, Sustainability, Travel Choice, Commuter Delay, Placemaking, Affordability, Economic Prosperity, Health and Safety. These goals had been identified in the first phase of their plan development and engagement. Starting with prioritizing goals that matter to residents was a terrific way to get participants engaged in the survey.
Then, the survey presented three scenarios that differed in their levels of investment in various transportation types. Survey respondents were asked to rate each of the scenarios on a scale from one to five stars.
Scenario A emphasized roadway projects and continued the trend of investment in public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects across the city.
Scenario B emphasized a more balanced investment in roadway, public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects along corridors and within activity centers.
Scenario C emphasized investing in public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects along corridors and within activity centers and fewer roadway projects.
To create a more personalized and educational experience, the goals previously prioritized by the survey respondents were listed on the right-hand side, with a visual indication of how each scenario performed against selected goals. This made it easy for participants to easily see which of the scenarios best aligned with their prioritized goals.
Finally, before wrapping up with links and a few demographic questions, additional questions were asked on the items the participant had identified as important. For each priority, a number of potential strategies were presented, and participants were asked to identify the ones that promoted the priority best. The survey stated, “One transportation scenario will become the starting point to tailor a strategy for Austin. Your answers to the survey questions on this screen will help create our preferred strategy.” It asked which of the scenarios should be used as a starting point.
Austin’s survey was so well designed and engaging that it received a completion rate of over 62%. This is especially impressive when compared to the standard public completion rate of 10 to 15% for online multiple-choice surveys.
Austin collected 101,979 valuable data points of informed public input!
The City of Austin’s ASMP results are impressive in many ways. A few interesting statistics, straight from their report, are shared below.
A total of 5,774 participants provided their feedback online.
Commuter Delay is clearly the number one priority, with Affordability as a close second. Health and Safety, Travel Choice, and Sustainability are tightly grouped as the third through fifth most important priorities.
For People with Mobility Impairments, Travel Choice is the second highest priority in terms of times ranked.
For Seniors, Health and Safety is the second highest priority in terms of times ranked.
For both Youth and People of Color, Affordability is the number one priority in terms of times ranked; however, Commuter Delay also ranked highly.
Scenario C was the highest rated option; it received almost double the amount of 5‐star votes over A or B. In fact, 42% of the overall population chose Scenario C as the starting point, with Scenario B as the second most popular choice. That meant Scenario A, with a focus on roadway over transit, was least popular.
The top strategy chosen to address transportation issues is to “provide more public transit service and enhance connections to/from public transit.”
More than one-third of all comments discuss the need or desire for more transit in the city.
There was a focus on four traditionally underrepresented groups, namely Youth (Age 15-24), Seniors (Age 65 and older), People with Mobility Impairments, and People of Colour. A total of 1,844 survey respondents fell into at least one of these four groups.
The full results can be found in the report here. These results informed the third and final phase of the plan development and engagement, which concluded the ASMP. The results from the third phase can be found here.
Congratulations to our friends at Kimley-Horn and the City of Austin for a fun and informative MetroQuest survey and very impressive results!
From the very beginning, we at MetroQuest have made it our mission to deliver great online public engagement experiences that broaden outreach to meaningfully include the public in planning more livable places and moving more people. We always love to see great online surveys used to engage the public in transit planning!
After all, it’s perfectly logical to collect community input since transit is a public transportation system, by definition, designed to move the public. Indeed, community engagement is a critical aspect of the transit planning process, and we have some a few tips and success stories to inspire you.
Tip #1: Increase public participation by engaging the public online.
Transit agencies are particularly brilliant at increasing public participation by extending their outreach programs online. They have a captive audience! While transit goers are not likely to get on the bus or subway to attend a public meeting, they will certainly give agencies five minutes of their time to take a survey from their mobile phone. Online surveys make it easy to engage the public where they are – on their devices, while riding on transit or from the comfort of their homes. We’ve seen transit agencies, from coast to coast, successfully engage thousands online, again and again.
Tip #2: Collect public input early in the transit planning process.
It’s important to engage the public early in the planning process, providing people with information and giving them the opportunity to offer feedback. In order to get buy in and gauge interest in a specific public transportation option, for example, it’s crucial that the community learns of its benefits, drawbacks, or tradeoffs before any major planning occurs. This allows planners and decision makers to understand the public’s needs, priorities, and interests to build alternative transportation scenarios.
Tip #3: Use new ways to reach traditionally underrepresented groups.
Transit agencies from LA Metro to New York’s MTA are successfully increasing equity and dramatically broadening outreach with online surveys and promotions. Using Facebook and other social media as a promotional channel helps agencies reach groups that aren’t likely to attend a public meeting.
By engaging traditionally underrepresented groups – including all ages, ethnicities, and incomes – online surveys allow transit agencies to better understand public priorities and design transit to truly meet the needs of people who need it most.
Broad public input is uncovering public preference for sustainable transportation options, including light rail.
Perhaps what’s most interesting about public engagement is the results themselves – increased public support for transit and hundreds of thousands of data points to build data-driven transit plans. What public input tells agencies in turn helps planners and decision makers focus on the options that receive the most public support.
Light rail, one of these options, is fast becoming a popular public transportation favorite and the benefits are wide ranging. According to the Federal Transit Administration, transit in general plays a vital role in contributing positively to sustainability efforts. Rail, more specifically, has a number of environmental benefits, including:
Improved air quality, since most rail transit emits little or no pollution;
Reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; in fact, light rail produces 62% less GHG than an average single occupancy vehicle;
Overall energy savings due to a lower use of fuel;
A decreased need for infrastructure for and manufacturing of vehicles;
Reduced congestion, which makes life easier for travelers and positively contributes to improved air quality, reduced GHG emissions, energy savings, and fuel savings;
More compact development, which leads to land conservation as well as decreased travel demand;
Economic development; and,
Greater access to affordable mobility.
Sustainability is a hot topic for most communities. But if planners don’t ask, it’s difficult to uncover definitively what the public wants.
Let’s look at a case study from the East Coast. Hillsborough MPO in Florida recently used a MetroQuest survey (you can try the demo here) to engage 9,575 residents, who provided nearly 236,000 data points of public input. This data was instrumental in uncovering new insights into local transportation needs and preferences. In an 4-minute interview, the agency’s Executive Director, Beth Alden, shared her delight in uncovering broad public support for light rail:
“There was so much interest in passenger rail as an option in this survey. I was kind of surprised. And, what that means is we get to keep that kind of technology on the table as we move into our Long Range Transportation Plan.”
By broadly engaging the public and gathering such amazing amounts of data, Hillsborough MPO discovered that their local community hugely supports light right as a public transit option. This information is allowing them to confidently create transit plans that reflect public opinion.
In San Francisco, SFMTA increased public participation involving 8,100+ in support of its Central Subway Extension Alternatives Study.
On the West Coast, San Francisco has already capitalized on the benefits of light rail with its extensive Muni Metro network, the third busiest light rail system in the United States. Faced with projected growth of nearly 1,000,000 residents by 2049, the need to expand their public transit system is becoming ever more critical.
Recently, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) used MetroQuest as their digital community engagement survey to inform the public of a possible extension to the Central Subway route. The team needed to gauge the public’s priorities and support for the project. Their survey was part of the preliminary analysis of their forthcoming Central Subway Extension Alternatives Study.
The goal of SFMTA’s project team was to increase public participation beyond the initial on-the-ground community outreach. In a recent interview, Adrienne Heim, Public Information Officer at SFMTA, described the efforts, “Last year we went out to merchant and neighborhood groups to discuss the study, ask people how they got around the city of San Francisco, their transportation goals, and how the study could incorporate or support some of those goals. That included gathering ideas for routes and station locations.”
On the ground efforts resulted in the completion of 129 paper surveys. Adrienne next described how going online increased public participation by over 62,000%,
“The survey results were amazing and well beyond our expectations. Within three days of deploying MetroQuest, we received 1,000 responses, and towards the end of the survey, we received 8,137!”
The survey cleverly asked about transportation goals to get a picture of what the public valued. Respondents who supported travel reliability and capacity building to reduce crowding supported the extension. Fewer prioritized such investments as preserving on-street parking or car travel lanes – these respondent preferred more infrastructure for cars and personal vehicles. Additional goals included accessibility and active transportation, namely bicycle and pedestrian amenities. SFMTA was pleased to share the results with the public, with overwhelming support for transit:
The survey continued to ask about travel choices, such as current travel modes, as well as questions about the extension itself and potential routes. It then provided a map for supporters to concretely identify their origins and destinations, as well as preferred new station locations before wrapping up with demographic questions and additional information about the project.
“Having the ability to disperse our survey quickly and easily online was greatly beneficial to us,” explained Tracey Lin, Deputy Project Manager. “Our survey was also built for mobile engagement thanks to MetroQuest, and it was easily accessible to stakeholders from all over the city who are interested in our project.”
All in all, SFTMA collected 148,405 insightful data points to inform their transit plan, and 13,737 public comments to give context to specific feedback.
“The way that we could structure questions through MetroQuest allowed greater feedback and input, enabling a more robust planning analysis,” concluded Adrienne. “Those 8,137 survey responses allowed us to confirm that most respondents want a subway that goes beyond the Northern Terminus and a little bit towards the West.”
The Central Subway will be a long-term investment in a transportation system that will meet the needs of growing populations in a sustainable way. It is estimated that the Central Subway will serve 35,000 customers daily when it opens!
While a concept feasibility study from 2015 showed that an extension is technically possible, it didn’t show what the public preferred, which is why a four-step alternatives study is currently underway to understand the desirability of the extension, as well as to determine goals, possible routes, and station locations that will best serve the community. We’re thrilled MetroQuest could help.
If you’re looking for the best way to celebrate International Women’s Day 2020, you can also dive deeper into this success story with the webinar: Celebrating Brilliant Public Engagement by Women in Transit Planning with SFMTA. Thank you Adrienne and Tracey for celebrating #IWD2020 with us this year and congratulations on your outstanding achievements!
For government agencies, “online public engagement” encompasses a particularly wide array of tools and services – from chat bots on websites to digital town halls.
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, for instance, tell us in a recent report that “the practice of using social media is not only routine, it is considered in many ways a key factor in public engagement.”
Indeed, state and local governments use social media to alert the public of major events, like transportation disruptions. It’s also used for casual storytelling with photos and videos. The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), for example, uses Facebook to bring the public “Behind the Scenes,” featuring employees engaged in interesting activities like treating roads with brine to keep motorists safe.
With so many online tools and options for public engagement – from social media to community forums, each used by various departments of government – it can become challenging for our friends in the planning department to get access to the right solution. Why? They have unique requirements not always well understood by decision makers and influencers in other departments. Let’s help provide clarification.
Planners have unique public engagement objectives. They need to collect informed community input on complex topics to support their urban and transportation plans.
Urban and transportation planning projects tend to be critical make-or-break points in an agency’s relationship with the public. These projects directly affect quality of life and represent major public investments. Ineffective public engagement can have grave implications – scrutiny from decision makers, important plans not getting approved, public backlash, bad press, ousting of elected officials, and delays in critical infrastructure – all detrimental to the wellbeing of our communities. The importance of public engagement for planning is clear.
So, what makes for effective public engagement? Since 1997, we at MetroQuest have dedicated our life’s work to answering this question. Collaborating with all the industry associations and thousands of AICP certified professionals, we’ve learned that planners need public engagement to deliver unique outcomes so they can stand confidently before councils and demonstrate support for plans, backed by credible data that proves that their plan represents true public priorities and preferences.
1. Planners need high levels of public participation.
Our planning friends require very high levels of public participation across a broad demographic, not just from the same small group of beneficiaries or naysayers. Ideally, thousands of people across a broad demographic provide input. To move forward with oftentimes bold recommendations, planners need to make the case to decision makers that the broader public is behind their plan.
2. Public input must be informed by weaving in education.
Planners need to educate the public about complex issues before providing input – yet residents won’t read long PDF project documents full of planning jargon. Education must be woven into the online engagement experience as microlearning, ideally with visualizations and interactivity, so the public can quickly learn about project nuances and tradeoffs, improving the quality of their input.
3. The experience must be private for input that’s free of bias.
To uncover true public priorities, planners require input from residents that is not influenced by the stronger, louder voices in the community. This means that the online engagement experience needs to offer privacy to support input that is free from bias, bullying, and intimidation. This is particularly critical to broaden the reach to traditionally underrepresented groups.
4. A wealth of quantifiable input is needed for data-driven planning.
To be actionable, public input must be specific and primarily quantitative. Obtaining a wealth of largely quantifiable data points (50,000+) drives better decisions in planning, more so than qualitative input (via comments). Planners make risky and expensive planning decisions with long term impact. Clear, quantifiable input gives them confidence to build bold plans.
5. Input from the public must be defensible to get plans approved.
Collecting bias-free informed input from thousands of participants in the form of quantifiable data is what planners require to defend their plans. Indeed, getting multi-million-dollar plans approved by committees and elected officials takes data-driving planning backed by broad community support.
With declining participation at public meetings, planners have turned to online engagement to meet these unique objectives. Online tools offer the most cost-effective and resource-efficient way to broaden public participation. But, with so many digital options already available within their agency, do our friends really need another tool?
Can’t an online forum do the trick? How about a SurveyMonkey?
For answers to these questions, let’s explore how various online tools stack up against the unique requirements of our friends in the planning department.
Social media is a terrific communication tool, but it was never designed for public input in planning.
Social media is used by just about every government agency as an effective communication tool for announcements, soundbites, and casual storytelling, as we saw with GDOT. Social media – from free to boosted posts, from Facebook to Twitter – also offers one of the most cost-effective ways to broaden reach to promote other public input options like public meetings and online surveys. For example, South Carolina DOT recently used Facebook boosted posts to get over 13,000 residents to take their MetroQuest survey … for less than the cost of a single public meeting!
That said, social media alone is ineffective at collecting quantifiable public input to inform plans. Likes and retweets cannot support complex planning decisions. Social media posts by residents are difficult to analyze and can steer towards contentious topics outside the scope of planning projects. And let’s not forget that posts and comments are public, permanent, and polarizing. While definitely part of the planner’s toolbox for promoting public engagement opportunities, social media in and of itself is not used for quantifiable public input by planners.
Forums require registration, while comments are public, subject to bias and intimidation, and difficult to quantify.
Online forums (and other ideation tools) can be useful early on in a planning project to identify public priorities from vocal members of the community. They can uncover concerns and ideas not previously considered. While indeed a useful tool in the planner’s toolbox, online forums miss the mark in many ways.
Requiring the public to “register to join” has proven to reduce participation by up to 95%! And not unlike public meetings and social media, the open nature of comments can bias public input and tend to polarize views. Participation is particularly intimidating for residents who are learning English as a second language. And with reams of qualitative comments, including banter and tribal arguments, it’s difficult for planners to summarize the results for decision making.
While open-ended comments can be helpful in characterizing public sentiments, planners need structured data, summarized visually, that can be digested in minutes by busy decision makers.
Text-based surveys are boring, yield low participation, and are hardly educational.
Online surveys can be a great way to defeat the shortcomings of online forums. After all, each survey respondent gets the same private online experience, free of bias and intimidation. The data collected using multiple-choice questions is quantitative and easy to graph. Indeed, SurveyMonkey can be a great tool to quickly collect public input!
That is, until you need to engage the public on a complex planning project. When it comes to multifaceted initiatives – like comprehensive plans or transportation projects – simple survey data can fail when scrutinized by public officials. Text-based surveys don’t convey project nuances. People don’t read a PDF to learn about a project, then take a long survey that feels like homework. It’s no wonder that public response rates for text based surveys range from 10 to 15%, resulting in usually less than 100 participants. Would you take this survey?
For planning departments, success in public engagement typically means over a thousand participants from diverse demographics, each contributing 30 to 100 data points (priorities ranked, map markers dropped, images rated, etc.) – that means over 30,000 data points of unbiased public input to satisfy decision makers.
Over the past 20+ years, the team at MetroQuest has pioneered digital public engagement for planners – we’re intimately familiar with their unique objectives. So how can we help our friends to make the case that they need MetroQuest – the only specialized online engagement solution designed for planners? Let’s turn the spotlight on a 2020 success story.
GDOT collected nearly 50,000 data points to inform its 85 Corridor Study!
The Georgia Department of Transportation is conducting a comprehensive corridor study along I-85, between I-285 and I-985. The corridor is roughly 18 miles long, with 6 travel lanes, 16 interchanges, and serves approximately 300,000 vehicles daily. In the first phase of the study, the Office of Planning engaged the public to get input on how to reduce congestion, enhance traffic operations, and improve safety. Let’s look at a demo of their MetroQuest survey:
GDOT increased public participation to over 2,550 survey respondents!
For a corridor study, attendance at a typical public meeting might include 10 people, while a text-based online survey might reach 50 or 100. The planning team at GDOT successfully broadened reach, offering their MetroQuest survey in English, Spanish, Korean, and Vietnamese, to gain valuable public input from 2,550+ residents! Several unique MetroQuest features made such high public participation possible.
No Registration. MetroQuest doesn’t require registration and leaves demographic questions to the end. Planners don’t need participant names and contact information since personal responses are not expected. Eliminating upfront registration drives up participation rates from the standard 10-15% upwards to 50-80% with MetroQuest.
5-Minute Experience. Public participation drops drastically (by over 90%) when planners ask the public for more than 5 minutes of their time. GDOT launched a great MetroQuest survey that took just 5 minutes to complete. It was fast and easy for residents to provide input with a click, drag, and drop, minimizing lengthy typing.
Project-Specific Input Fast. Planners need time-bound feedback at specific stages of planning projects. GDOT engaged 2,500+ people in three months with their MetroQuest survey live from December 5, 2019 to March 2, 2020. All the public input stayed within project scope, with specific questions seeking public influence on key project outcomes.
Any Device. MetroQuest surveys are responsive and optimized for mobile. GDOT was able to engage Georgians across all their devices – from any smart phone, tablet, laptop, or computer connected to the internet – without the struggle of pinching and zooming. With MetroQuest, it’s common for 50 to 70 percent of respondents to participate from the convenience of their mobile devices, anytime, anywhere.
“Fun” Drives Social Sharing. Visually engaging surveys, packed with colorful images, are readily shared via social media, which dramatically broadens demographic reach. GDOT used MetroQuest’s social sharing buttons to encourage participants to share the survey.
Microlearning helped GDOT planners collect informed public input!
Completing an interesting, interactive survey that informs while collecting feedback is a rewarding experience. MetroQuest offers visualizations and interactive elements that feel more like games than surveys. Comments such as, “Great survey, wonderful project. So fun, I learned so much”, showed us that participants loved the experience. Georgians “learned while answering” with education weaved into the experience in microlearning moments, giving planners confidence that the input was informed.
Microlearning. In their MetroQuest survey, GDOT welcomed Georgians with a succinct overview of the 85 Study. Participants then ranked priorities with short descriptions. While rating strategies, they learned how to increase capacity and improve safety. People gained appreciation for the scope and scale of the project, while providing input.
Planning Templates. MetroQuest uses gamification to educate the public in minutes using survey templates designed for planning. Participants visualize the pros and cons of different scenarios, stack coins to allocate budgets, rate images (like ranking five kinds of bike lanes to realize nuances), gain appreciation for competing tradeoffs, drop markers on maps, and use dynamic slider bars to fund projects using taxes and fees.
Input from the public for the 85 Corridor Study was 100% free of bias!
The 2,550+ Georgians who took the MetroQuest survey each had an identical public engagement experience – a clean map for their ideas, identical priorities to rank, and the same strategies to rate. The 1000th participant used the same uninfluenced input mechanism as the 1st participant, unaware of prior community input.
Clean Map. Some tools allow residents to drop markers on public web maps – the problem is that input becomes biased by all the markers previously added by others. A cluttered map also makes it difficult for participants to see where to place their markers, particularly on smart phones. GDOT used MetroQuest to collect over 25,200 map marker attributes, free of bias, while making the experience quick and easy.
Private Experience. GDOT planners used MetroQuest for direct, one-way public input to uncover true community preferences, free of peer influence, social intimidation, and toxic banter. Each survey experience was identical and private.
Nearly 50,000 data points were collected to inform the 85 Study!
The Office of Planning now has nearly 50,000 data points to support data-driven improvements to the 18-mile stretch on the I-85. This quantifiable data includes 25,000 spatial map marker attributes and 24,000 strategy ratings – it will help in recommending projects that meet the true needs of local stakeholders who depend on the corridor.
Comments in Context. GDOT planners added comment boxes in their MetroQuest survey to add context for the quantitative questions they asked. They collected over 6,000 comments to bring color and commentary to supplement the data.
Charts & Graphs. Using the MetroQuest Data Center, GDOT planners are exploring charts and graphs to build their study reports. Colorful visualizations of all the quantitative public input will support their recommendations, impress the Board, and build confidence for project approvals.
We’d like to congratulate the team at GDOT for their outstanding online public engagement success! You’ve gained tremendous public support for your 85 Study. Thank you for subscribing to MetroQuest – our team looks forward to seeing many more surveys from GDOT this year.
We hope that GDOT’s success story will inspire other agencies to endow their planners with North America’s only online public engagement solution purpose-designed for planning. When more members of the public participate in planning we get more livable cities and we’re able to move more people. We all benefit!
Optimizing Online Engagement for Local Government with MetroQuest
Online tools are a critical part of the public engagement tool box. This webinar highlights how local governments are optimizing online engagement for the best results.
