Category: [SUCCESS]

[SUCCESS] MetroQuest Success Team Welcomes Oklahoma DOT

I would like to personally thank the esteemed panel of judges for recognizing the accomplishments of our world-class team. This award represents the collective achievements of all of our employees. They helped make 2018 a truly transformative year! We achieved 5

We’re so excited to welcome our friends at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to the MetroQuest community!

Our CEO, Mike Walsh, and I visited their offices in Oklahoma City last week. I always love being able to put faces to names, and I was thrilled to meet the Oklahoma DOT (ODOT) team in person. Our on-site training (which was recorded for future use) will ensure their users get started on the best path possible towards successful online public involvement!

With over 30 attendees, we were so excited to hear about the broad realm of public outreach projects ODOT is already planning!

We worked directly with the Oklahoma DOT team, as well as various consultants and ODOT partners. Training this breadth of users means that ODOT employees can hand over the reins on various projects to their consultants and be able to focus their time on even more topics. We loved getting to connect with so many groups, each with a different focus and plans for MetroQuest surveys! From highway plans to community projects, we have examples for every project scale and type to help inspire their next online survey.

We visited in April, which is Work Zone Safety month! ODOT is focused on keeping all highway workers safe, and this was obvious from the moment we stepped in the door. There are tips on how to drive more safely posted on traffic cones in the lobby and even a huge throne of safety cones available for photos and posing! The focus on keeping highway workers safe and uninjured is clear, and we’re looking forward to helping Oklahoma DOT involve the public on this topic to learn how they can further improve safety methods.

I’m not going to lie, sitting on the throne of cones was definitely a highlight of my trip!

We always love being able to connect with customers in person. Thank you Oklahoma DOT for being such amazing hosts!

April 9, 2019
[SUCCESS] Celebrating Women Doing Great Public Engagement

Happy International Women’s Day!!

Let’s celebrate the outstanding achievements of women in planning and public engagement. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is #BalanceforBetter. We wanted to take a moment and highlight some fantastic stories of women who are achieving balanced engagement, moving accessibility and mobility forward, and planning more equitable, vibrant cities for us all.

Celebrating Women | Balanced Engagement for Equitable Plans

Beth Alden shares her journey to executive leadership, Liane Miller gives us 5 tips that helped her engage 52% women for the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan, and Jennifer Fix talks about a FEMOPOLIS taking us overseas to visit cities for women, by women. Get inspired by their exceptional stories!

Webinar AICP CM Credit: 1.0

Watch the Webinar

Public Engagement at All Scales | CMAP’s Winning Recipe

Learn how Chicago’s award-winning MPO is engaging at all scales by collaborating with 284 communities. CMAP Deputy Executive Director of Planning Stephane Phifer, Associate Outreach Planner Katanya Raby, and Senior Planner Lindsay Bayley take us inside their local approach to online engagement for OnTo2050.

Webinar AICP CM Credit: 1.0

Hear from CMAP

Online Public Engagement Playbook

Liane Miller tells us how she engaged 5,100+ residents online to help inform and shape the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan, the first locally-focused comprehensive transportation plan. Watch this on-demand webinar to learn how America’s #1 boom town is planning inclusively for the city’s transportation future!

Webinar AICP CM Credit: 1.0

Learn more with Liane

Beyond Facebook | How DOTs Go Online for Real Input

Social media works for sharing information, but let’s get real. Social media can’t collect quantifiable public input for your transportation plan. Find out how Joann Mitchell and Heather Edic with Kinney Engineering surveyed 5,000+ residents online, collecting 80,000+ data points to inform their Glenn Highway project!

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Get the scoop

Centralina COG Engages Over 8,350 Residents

Discover how Michelle engaged 8,350+ residents! “We’ve really had robust engagement online. As far as outcomes, being able to do scenario planning and connect the dots between people’s values and the types of land uses they thought were important was tremendous for our region.”

Watch Michelle’s interview

Discover How Micheal Baker Wow Their Clients

Watch this 3-minute clip on the outstanding success Lorna achieved by going beyond public meetings to reach thousands online. “We’re able to go to decision makers and show them ‘we got this much input, and these were the findings.’ This gives them more confidence to tell us that they’re ready to move forward.”

Watch Lorna’s clip

March 8, 2019
[INSIGHTS] MPO Report: Public Involvement Trends that Matter
With 10,500 employees, NCDOT is the largest agency in history to extend its MetroQuest subscription to all regional agencies. We’re seeing a growing trend with DOTs building on their own public involvement success to empower regional agencies.

Public involvement best practices are rapidly evolving. How can you ensure your Metropolitan Planning Organization is keeping pace with public involvement trends?

In parallel with the AMPO Annual Conference, MetroQuest surveyed planners and public participation professionals to uncover how today’s MPOs are approaching engagement.

The trends in this report were generated by 170+ MPO professionals who shared how they’re involving the public to inform better transportation planning.

What did the “Public Involvement Matters” survey uncover? Modern MPOs outreach efforts are far outpacing basic regulatory requirements, but not without challenges to overcome. Let’s look at some highlights.

The #1 public engagement challenge among MPOs is poor participation!

We asked MPOs about their public involvement challenges, using both a rating and open-ended question. They rated ‘poor participation’ as the most common challenge, followed closely by ‘uninformed input’. “People just don’t make time to give their input,” noted one respondent, while another warned, “uninformed citizens are trying to sway projects.”

The majority of today’s MPOs reported involving the public highly regularly, most often monthly (40.5%) or quarterly (30.2%):

What are MPOs doing to increase participation? Most are going beyond public meetings, using social media and visually interactive online tools.

In this report, you’ll learn common issues, evolving methods, and the top priorities for today’s MPOs. Explore the results for new and proven ideas that your MPO can leverage to increase the success of your public involvement programs.

Get your free copy of the MPO Report here

Get the FREE MPO Report! You’ll learn:
1. How MPOs face 3 common public involvement challenges
2. The top 5 MPO priorities to improve citizen engagement
3. How to increase participation by engaging residents on their terms
4. Whether your MPO is using the top 3 engagement methods
5. What types of planning projects can benefit from public involvement
February 19, 2019
[SUCCESS] MetroQuest Success Team in North Carolina

I’d say most of our clients are dealing with challenges around mobility, the environment, and driven by a desire to make their own communities more livable and resilient.

We’re so excited to have the opportunity to welcome all the North Carolina MPOs and RPOs into the MetroQuest family! Some of us had the chance to meet them face-to-face and discuss the amazing public engagement projects we’ll be working on together this year. I traveled with our CEO, Mike Walsh, to Charlotte, Asheville, Kinston, and Raleigh to provide an overview of MetroQuest, as well as to facilitate hands-on training sessions.

Getting to teach our users in person is always a treat for me and having so many in each room, at every session, was absolutely incredible!

You could feel the crowd buzzing with every public involvement project we discussed, with tips and ideas being shared between all the MPOs and RPOs. I always love having the ability to put a face to a name, especially in this case with so many faces. I can’t wait to continue our discussions and work alongside these amazing people in their public engagement quests.

Being in-person meant that we were able to have all the new users create their own test surveys to explore the MetroQuest tool, and explore all the awesome ways they can use it on public participation projects of all scales. Being able to not only demo the software, but also to see how people are using it for the first time and answer questions right away made a huge difference. These users are already progressing quickly!

There’s a vast array of planning project types coming in North Carolina, from community plans, to highway development projects, to active transportation networks, and beyond. We can’t wait to see the amazing insights we can help all these groups gain with MetroQuest surveys.

These ambitions speak directly to my passions that I try to advocate for in my own community. I see MetroQuest as being one way to help empower better conversations around community and how we move around the globe. I am lucky to be able to work with like-mind clients who value the voice of the public.

February 15, 2019
[SUCCESS] A Warm Welcome to 36 Regional Planning Agencies in North Carolina

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has extended its MetroQuest public involvement subscription to include all Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and Rural Planning Organizations (RPOs) in 2019.

A forward-thinking agency, NCDOT confirmed its commitment to exceptional public involvement this month when it extended its annual MetroQuest subscription to include the 18 Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and 18 Rural Planning Organizations (RPOs) in the State.

The whole team at MetroQuest is excited to extend a very warm welcome to all 36 planning agencies. We’re thrilled to have them join the growing MetroQuest community. This month, our friendly and knowledgeable Customer Success Team is travelling throughout North Carolina to meet our new friends in person and to support smooth onboarding.

With an annual MetroQuest subscription, these agencies can launch unlimited educational surveys, engage thousands of people, and analyze public preferences with colorful dashboards. Expect to see outstanding public participation throughout the State of North Carolina in 2019!

“NCDOT has been using MetroQuest public involvement software to support various planning initiatives over the last three years,” said NCDOT Chief Deputy Secretary David Howard. “In leveraging this tool as a key component of our public involvement strategy, we’ve been able to increase the level of public participation and collect significantly more quality data.”

“All MPOs and RPOs in North Carolina will now have a new tool for their own online public involvement,” continued Howard. “Using common technology across all agencies will help create a better, more efficient public involvement process throughout the state.”

We’d like to congratulate NCDOT! Since 2016, the agency has collected nearly 120,000 data points of informed public input using MetroQuest surveys to better support planning efforts statewide. That’s worth celebrating.

“In 2018, we had unprecedented levels of engagement across multiple projects, including nearly 4,600 survey participants for our State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP),” reported Jamille Robbins, Public Involvement, Community Studies, and Visualization Group Leader at NCDOT. Read the NCDOT case study to learn about Jamille’s earlier success →

NCDOT is in good company. MetroQuest online surveys have been used to optimize public involvement by state agencies, including Arkansas DOT, Arizona DOT, Florida DOT, Maine DOT, Minnesota DOT, Missouri DOT, Montana DOT, South Carolina DOT, Texas DOT, and Wisconsin DOT.

Among America’s largest transportation agencies, they’ve used MetroQuest to optimize public participation in the planning of all types of projects, including bike and pedestrian, transit, corridor, and bridge plans as part of their statewide long-range transportation programs.

With 10,500 employees, NCDOT is the largest agency in history to extend its MetroQuest subscription to all regional agencies. We’re seeing a growing trend with DOTs building on their own public involvement success to empower regional agencies.

In 2018, Maine DOT extended its MetroQuest subscription to all MPOs in the state. We hope many other DOTs will take notice in 2019.

January 28, 2019
[SUCCESS] Celebrating This Year’s Public Engagement Success Stories

Congratulations to all of the planners and public participation professionals who achieved outstanding public engagement this year! With MetroQuest surveys, you collected millions of data points to inform better transportation and urban plans to create better places for us to live, work, and play.

As we approach the holidays, we love to celebrate great engagement!

Let’s take a few minutes unwrap some of this year’s outstanding success stories with our friends Lorna, Ken, Michelle, and Jeffrey …

Lorna & Ken at Micheal Baker Wowed Their Clients

Watch this 3-minute clip to share in the outstanding success our friends Lorna and Ken have achieved this year, going beyond public meetings to reach thousands of residents for their clients. “MetroQuest allows us to very efficiently and cost-effectively get a lot of input – big numbers! That’s good for us and it’s good for our clients,” Lorna, congratulations to you and your team!

Centralina COG Engages Over 8,350 Residents!

“We’ve really had robust engagement online. MetroQuest has been versatile for us and helped our communities to grow and prosper,” congratulations Michelle! Your team engaged over 8,350 residents and collected more than 91,950 data points. Play Michelle’s interview in this 3-minute video clip.

City of Peterborough Engages 3,800 Residents!

“The power of MetroQuest is the ability to get the representation of our population. On some of the surveys, we’ve had over 1,300 respondents. Getting that through just open houses is not possible,” congratulations Jeffrey! Your team collected meaningful input from 3,825 residents to inform your Official Plan update. Celebrate in Jeffrey’s success with this 2-minute clip.

You can explore many more success stories here. Happy holidays from your friends at MetroQuest!

December 21, 2018