Author: Bailey Macgillivray

Increased Public Participation in Transit Planning Builds Support for Sustainable Transportation
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:
1. Improved air quality, since most rail transit emits little or no pollution;
2. Reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; in fact, light rail produces 62% less GHG than an average single occupancy vehicle;
3. Overall energy savings due to a lower use of fuel;
4. A decreased need for infrastructure for and manufacturing of vehicles;
5. Reduced congestion, which makes life easier for travelers and positively contributes to improved air quality, reduced GHG emissions, energy savings, and fuel savings;
6. More compact development, which leads to land conservation as well as decreased travel demand;
7. Economic development; and,
8. 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.

For more on this outstanding success story, play Adrienne’s 3-minute video interview here:

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!
March 6, 2020
5 Reasons Planners Need a Unique Online Public Engagement Toolbox

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:

TRY DEMO

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!

To learn more, contact us today or watch the on-demand webinar: Optimizing Online Engagement for Local Government with MetroQuest.

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.

WATCH WEBINAR

March 2, 2020
6 Tips to Engage Thousands using Nextdoor to Promote Your Agency’s Survey
The City of Austin recently used MetroQuest, in partnership with national planning and design consulting firm, Kimley-Horn & Associates, to engage over 5,100 participants online! Their outstanding success is based on two factors: a great outreach plan and a fantastic MetroQuest survey that turned visitors into survey respondents. Before discussing the latter in my next post, we’ll turn our attention to one major aspect of their engagement strategy: their use of Nextdoor.

What is Nextdoor?

In a nutshell, Nextdoor is a social media platform connecting people based on their geographic locations, with the intent to “empower neighbors to build stronger, safer, and happier communities.” Using Nextdoor’s engagement tools, public service agencies including planning, utilities, police, and other local authorities can communicate with residents within their specific area or neighborhood.

Nextdoor members, meaning residents of a specific area, are automatically subscribed to receive messages from agencies that serve them, making it a simple yet effective tool to add to any agency’s engagement toolbox.

If your government agency doesn’t already have an account, you can sign up to use Nextdoor here! Nextdoor even offers a very thorough step-by-step guide on how to sign up, add users, manage the account, and view results.

How can your agency use Nextdoor for public engagement?

NextDoor’s main method of communication with your agency’s neighborhood members is via posts. There are four types of posts on Nextdoor for agencies.
1. Messages: these are the most common way to communicate with residents and can be used to invite them take your online surveys. Photos (of your surveys) or documents may be added to attract attention.
2. Polls: these are a quick way to ask for feedback on basic topics. Each member can vote only once. To gather more robust feedback or for more complex plans, a MetroQuest survey might be a better option. Nextdoor polls can help generate interest in your longer surveys by highlighting a single question to get people invested.
3. Events: these may include notices of public meetings, workshops, or other events that complement your online engagement efforts.
4. Urgent Alerts: these are exactly that – and are more applicable to public safety or emergencies.
When making a post, you can choose one of the above types, as well as indicate the target audience (more on that below). There is also an option to send a message directly to “Nextdoor Leads,” who are typically the most engaged members or the founding members of the neighborhood on Nextdoor. It’s also possible to share the message directly to other platforms including Facebook and Twitter for even greater reach and impact.

Here are 6 tips to effectively promote your public survey with Nextdoor!

What does it take to write an engaging Nextdoor post? Let’s explore six tips that can help you drive participation for your next MetroQuest survey.
1. Messages include a subject line as well as body copy. Use the subject line to include an eye-catching, urgency-creating call to action. Here’s a great example: Austin Strategic Mobility Plan Survey: Public Feedback Needed!
2. A major benefit of Nextdoor is the ability to choose the audience for each post – options include the entire service area/region, or a subset such as specific service areas or specific neighborhoods. Monitor the post results and use follow-up posts to target specific zip codes that received fewer initial impressions, or continue to be underrepresented in the survey.
3. Similar to the MetroQuest survey itself, the post’s tone should be precise, relevant, and simple, and should avoid jargon or acronyms.
4. Include a direct link to the MetroQuest survey to make it easy for people to immediately provide input, before they get distracted.
5. Use an image! Pictures of happy people taking the survey on a phone or iPad can be compelling. So can an image of the survey itself.
6. Create a follow-up post that includes a final call to action shortly before the survey closes. A “last chance” post always garners attention.
Nextdoor offers additional best practices, case studies, and several other resources here:
Tips are useful … but seeing them in action is even more practical. Stay tuned! In my next blog post, I’ll share how the City of Austin engaged over 5,100 residents by promoting their MetroQuest survey on Nextdoor. Here’s a teaser. Check out this powerful multi-lingual post:

Can’t wait? Liane Miller, AICP and Senior Business Process Consultant with Austin’s Transportation Department, tells all in her on-demand webinar: Online Public Engagement Playbook. Join me in congratulating Liane on her outstanding public engagement success by commenting below!
February 26, 2020
Climate Change – Engaging the Public to Improve Sustainability
The climate is changing. Around the globe, incredibly important work is being done to address the effects of climate change on humans, animals, ecosystems – in fact, the entire planet. At MetroQuest, we’re thrilled to be a part of the solution, helping governments and planning firms to facilitate meaningful engagement with communities on climate change … to gather feedback as well as to foster buy-in for ways to respond.

Many citizens still wonder, “how can we effectively respond to climate change?”

Engaging communities on climate change response policies is an important step towards informing the public as well as receiving support in pursuing adaptation and mitigation strategies to manage climate change.

Climate change response policies typically fall into two categories: adaptation and mitigation. Simply stated, mitigation aims to reduce and curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Mitigation measures include practicing energy efficiency, using renewable energy, and using efficient transportation like electric buses, shared cars or bicycles. Adaptation, on the other hand, means finding solutions to address current or future effects of climate change, like landscape restoration, flexible cultivation, and more secure infrastructure (source: www.activesustainability.com).

Even more, ensuring that the public is given opportunities to participate in making decisions towards a sustainable future and having a say in dealing with climate change seems logical – after all, it’s the general public who will be affected by climate change as well as the decisions made by their governments.

The UNFCCC considered this important enough to specifically set it out in Article 6, which states that the signatory countries to the convention (including Canada and the United States) are to “promote and facilitate public participation in addressing climate change.”

This, however, can fall into the category of ‘easier said than done.’ The published paper, Public participation and climate change adaptation: avoiding the illusion of inclusion, highlights some of the challenges of public participation in decision-making processes for managing climate change. It describes the difficulty of ensuring that a broad demographic is engaged, in part due to the modes employed and in part due to the scientifically complex and multi-generational nature of the subject matter. Climate change requires action now in advance of major climate impacts.

While these challenges may be true for traditional public participation or engagement avenues – like public meetings – the world has made astonishing leaps in the public engagement space over the past decade.

Online public engagement has entirely redefined our expectations for effective public participation in making more sustainable decisions as we plan our cities and transportation networks.

At MetroQuest, we’ve again and again seen consultants and agencies use visually engaging online surveys to successfully distill these complex issues into manageable material, and with that, inform and engage the public online, and ultimately succeed in collecting informed input from communities to help shape more effective local and regional responses to climate change.

In fact, particularly on the highly complex and hotly (excuse the pun) debated issue of climate change, online community engagement allows us to not only capture ideas, but to also assess the public’s willingness to implement changes, and therefore test the feasibility of possible solutions, all while providing much needed information to the community.

While many community engagement activities are conducted for similar purposes, online community engagement also has the added benefit of being widely accessible and thereby able to reach a much wider and broader demographic. MetroQuest is helping reach all demographics, including the traditionally difficult to engage youth. These are the critical voices of the next generation … and now they can participate and impact climate change strategies from the convenience of their smart phones.

Let’s take a look at a powerful example of how governments are using online engagement to engage the public in making their communities more sustainable. We’ll explore how our friends at Kim Lundgren Associates are working on this with San Antonio, Texas.

The city is in the midst of developing a Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) that touches on mitigation as well as adaptation elements. It includes both a roadmap to reducing GHG emissions and plans for adapting to climate change to ensure that the community stays the vibrant place it is today for future generations to come.

San Antonio is taking a progressive approach to preparing itself by focusing on the three pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social. This corresponds to the three imperatives of sustainable development, a term derived from the famous 1987 Bruntland Report, which formed the basis for most sustainability work undertaken over the past thirty years.

San Antonio’s community engagement goals were progressive. The city aimed:
1. to ensure that a diverse sample, both geographically and demographically, were engaged throughout the planning process and were subsequently represented; and,
2. to “foster valuable engagement” on their climate mitigation as well as adaptation strategies.
In addition to online community engagement with MetroQuest, public meetings and open houses were held, social media campaigns were launched, steering committees and technical work groups were formed, stakeholder meetings were held, and a project website and email campaign were launched. Earlier this year, San Antonio released an impressive first draft of the CAAP to the public and a revised draft was created after stakeholder input was gathered.

The online community engagement through MetroQuest asked community members a number of questions, from rating their willingness to adopt cleaner energy choices to indicating the importance of specific factors in their decision-making process, such as cost or convenience.

Their MetroQuest survey also asked what San Antonio should focus on with topics ranging from energy use and clean energy to questions about alternatives to driving GHG emitting cars including public transit, active transportation, and electric vehicles. It directly gauged the public’s willingness to adopt different strategies in each category as well as factors influencing their current and future decision making. You can try out a demo version of their survey here:

Almost a thousand participants were engaged online and nearly 30,000 data points were collected with San Antonio’s MetroQuest survey!

Not only did they receive buy-in from the community beforehand, but the participants actively helped to create the plan to move San Antonio forward. In the report that followed, the Mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nirenberg, stated:

“Throughout the SA Climate Ready process, people from across the community have helped craft a sustainable community approach by examining best practices and policies around how we build; how we power our homes, cars and businesses; how we travel; how we conserve water and green space; how we reduce air pollution; and, perhaps most importantly, how we take care of our most vulnerable neighbors.”

The results of the online community engagement through MetroQuest is reaffirming; almost 65% of people would be willing to pay 5% more on their utility bill for cleaner energy, almost 45% even up to 10% more. Cost of electric vehicles as well as availability of infrastructure such as charging stations were important factors for almost 2/3 of the respondents in their decisions to purchase a car-share or electric vehicle – both factors that a government could address with incentives or initiatives now that they are aware of these potential hindrances.

Source: SA Climate Ready: A Pathway for Climate Action & Adaptation

As the report also notes, the “successful implementation of the CAAP will require participation from all members of San Antonio’s community.” So, it’s logical to include as many members of the community in creating the CAAP in the first place via effective public engagement.

The members of the community that were engaged using the MetroQuest survey clearly agree: in fact, 80% of people either chose ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ with the statement that “people who are most impacted by climate change should be included in defining solutions.” The full results from the MetroQuest survey can be found in Appendix II.

Source: SA Climate Ready: A Pathway for Climate Action & Adaptation

Online community engagement serves agencies who are looking for community input while satisfying the desire from the community to be a part of the solution. For the hot topics of today (there’s the pun again) that cannot succeed without the participation of the general public – like climate change adaptation and mitigation – online community engagement is a logical step to both inform and engage a community on possible strategies before embarking on implementing them. Public engagement early in the planning process is key to effective climate change action.
January 7, 2020
[MEET METROQUEST] Norma Hogan, Customer Success Manager

We get excited about all types of urban and transportation planning topics here at MetroQuest. Sustainability is definitely something we’re all passionate about, but perhaps one of us tops the list. I’d like to introduce you to Norma Hogan whose pursuit of sustainability is inspiring others at work, home and in our community. Let’s get to know Norma a little better…

What drew you to MetroQuest seven years ago?

From the very beginning, I loved the intersection between sustainability and technology, particularly computers and online engagement. While I’m far from a programmer, I’ve always considered myself to be a bit of a closet computer nerd – and I mean that in the nicest way possible as the “nerds” around here are a fantastic group of brilliant people. Sustainability has been my passion for as long as I can remember, so finding a job that combined the two seemed like hitting the jackpot. To me, computers are a means to an end, the end in this case being sustainability and public engagement.

Norma, can you give us the 10,000-foot view of your role at MetroQuest?

I’ve held a number of different roles over the past seven years. I started as a configuration manager, which meant designing MetroQuest surveys for our customers. I was then promoted to project manager before MetroQuest became a Software as a Service (SaaS) company. Most recently, I worked as a Success Manager working closely with our customers to help them make the most out of MetroQuest. Since recently returning from completing my Master’s Degree in Environment and Management, I’m wearing many hats working on strategic projects and sharing my experience with the Customer Success and Support team and the Marketing department.

Are you able to draw on your passion for sustainability and utilize it in your role at MetroQuest?

Many, if not most, of the planning projects that our customers use MetroQuest for have elements of sustainability – from transit projects to climate change adaptation plans and everything in between. Especially as a project manager, I felt like a planner through osmosis. Having some knowledge in sustainability has definitely been an advantage. While working at MetroQuest, I’ve also had the opportunity to go back to school and complete my Master’s Degree in Sustainability and Management. I’m excited that I now get to write about sustainability for our marketing department and share the important work our customers are doing to move sustainability forward.

What do you think your customers do differently in terms of public engagement?

Our customers understand the importance of hearing from the silent majority: those who don’t attend public meetings or workshops … or perhaps do attend, but don’t necessarily make their voice heard. So many people fall into this category – youth, students, working parents, all of whom don’t have the time or don’t find traditional ways of engagement appealing. And yet, their opinions very much do matter.

By adding online engagement to their public engagement strategy, our customers get input from a much broader demographic. Not just for optics, because they genuinely want to get buy-in from the public to ensure they build a better plan that the public will support. To me, that’s a critical element of democracy. To bring it back to sustainability – we need a broad demographic to be informed, rather than just preach to the already converted, and everyone to be heard equally, not just the squeaky wheel.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I volunteer in a couple of different sustainability capacities – on the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee to the City of Surrey Council as well as on the Environmental Team for the Surrey Board of Trade. I also volunteer for the David Suzuki Foundation in more capacities than I could list here, from coaching families to live greener to tending to pollinator gardens. If I’m not volunteering or working, I spend time with my family, most likely doing something active and outdoors with my husband and my two beautiful children.

Stay tuned for many blogs on sustainability authored by Norma. I know I’ll be excited to read them…

August 14, 2019
How to Engage Residents in Sustainable Transportation Planning

With climate change becoming an increasingly important issue, we’ve seen several transportation planners use the dynamic features of MetroQuest to take action! We would like to acknowledge the San Diego Regional Planning Agency (SANDAG), Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), and the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI) for their sustainability planning initiatives and contributions to making the world a better place.

San Diego Regional Planning Agency (SANDAG)

SANDAG used their MetroQuest Site to gain feedback on their environmentally focused 2019-2050 Regional Plan. Each MetroQuest Site contains a Welcome Screen, a Wrap Up Screen, and three additional question screens to suit the needs of the project (selected from 14 available Screen templates). SANDAG selected the Priority Ranking Screen, the Scenario Rating Screen, and the Tradeoffs Screen in their MetroQuest Site allowing them to both educate and collect valuable input from the public!

The Priority Ranking Screen allowed San Diego residents to rank five of the seven available priorities, such as climate change and public health, and to provide input on which they viewed as the most important issues to address. This allowed SANDAG to gain insight into the perspectives and preferences of the public, and learn what initiatives they should direct more attention to now and in the future.

The Scenario Rating Screen gave participants the ability to rate the three possible network concepts, and illustrate the extent to which each solution addressed their priorities on the Priority Ranking Screen. Residents were able to compare strategies, see the pros and cons of each, and then weigh in by rating each scenario. This Screen let participants gain an understanding of each option in just a few minutes before they voiced their opinions. For SANDAG this meant trustworthy and actionable data!

The Tradeoffs Screen was used to educate residents about critical decisions facing planners and collect feedback on the most preferable transportation options. Due to budget constraints implementing every project is simply not possible, but with their MetroQuest Site, SANDAG can better address the future needs of San Diego residents, all while minimizing harm to the environment.

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP)

CMAP project Alternative Futures: Innovative Transportation is another great example of environmentally friendly transportation planning! CMAP chose the Image Rating Screen and two Standard Survey Screens to gather informed input on how new transportation technologies will affect individual citizens.

The dynamic Visual Preference Screen asked participants three crucial questions: 1. what technological advancements would benefit your community most? 2. where would you live if your commute was more convenient? and 3. what are your concerns with new transportation technologies? The Visual Preference Screen offered valuable insights into the technological advancements necessary and where they should be implemented.

The two Standard Survey Screens allowed residents to share their preferences regarding future transportation options, and gave CMAP insight into how to ensure equitable access to technology, reduce congestion, and expand parking options. Additionally, the Standard Survey Screens aided CMAP in solving a problem that many of us in transportation planning face – how to keep public transit competitive with new technology.

Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC)

SPC launched the innovative Forces of Change survey, which embraced change by asking the public’s input on how to best cope with the external forces facing their future. Their MetroQuest Site reviewed several different factors, such as: population changes, new energy, and aging infrastructure. With new technologies being one of the categories, this survey offered valuable data needed to construct a better future, and incorporated a Strategy Rating Screen and a Standard Survey Screen.

The Strategy Rating Screen asked participants to examine a range of areas that many be impacted by external forces and weigh in on the urgency of each one using a quick star rating. On the Standard Survey Screen participants answered questions on which communities they believed will be most and least impacted by a range of external forces including the environmental and technological change.

Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI)

OIPI used MetroQuest to enhance their knowledge of public preferences as they planned for the green future of transportation in their VTrans2040 survey. Vtrans2040 used two Priority Ranking Screens to ask residents what they believed were the three biggest opportunities and concerns with emerging transportation technologies, such as autonomous vehicles and mobility-on-demand services.

The Strategy Rating Screen allowed OIPI to gain insight into how Virginia residents thought they should invest in the transportation system. Participants rated potential improvements on a scale of one to five, with “five” being the most important. Additionally, the Strategy Rating Screen gave OIPI a greater understanding of the wishes and needs of residents, which projects to prioritize, and where they should allocate resources.

Thank you San Diego Regional Planning Agency, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, and the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment for your proactive efforts to fight climate change and implement environmentally friendly transportation plans. We are looking forward to seeing the implementation of these innovative and environmentally friendly solutions. We’re confident that these public engagement efforts will help to support a bright future for your transportation systems.

July 10, 2019