MetroQuest

Category: Transportation

  • [SUCCESS] Celebrating This Year’s Public Engagement Success Stories

    [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 Parkins

    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.

    Jeffrey-Humble

    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!

  • [WEBINAR] Beyond Facebook: How DOTs Go Online for Real Input

    [WEBINAR] Beyond Facebook: How DOTs Go Online for Real Input

    With attendance at public meeting on the decline, State Departments of Transportation are increasingly looking online to boost public participation in their planning projects.

    While social media seems to be the first place most agencies go for online engagement, they quickly conclude that social media isn’t enough. While Facebook is great for sharing planning projects with the public, it isn’t designed to collect meaningful input for transportation planning.

    Agencies are finding powerful synergies by combining social media platforms with visual and interactive online survey tools like MetroQuest.

    With the recent additions of TxDOT and NCDOT to the MetroQuest subscriber family, and with so many case studies producing outstanding results, we’re thrilled to share these stories with others looking to follow best practices.

    Watch this on-demand webinar to learn how the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities combined social media with MetroQuest to collect actionable public input online from nearly 5,000 residents to inform the Glenn Highway Integrated Corridor Management Study. Joann Mitchell and Heather Edic with Kinney Engineering share how careful preparation, one unfortunate bridge accident, and a compelling online survey resulted in over 80,000 data points to uncover current travel habits, issues, and new transportation ideas for Glenn Highway.

    Nearly 600 planning and public participation professionals registered for this popular live webinar. Did you miss it? Watch the webinar recording to learn how to:

    • Overcome 6 challenges with public involvement
    • Turn social media chaos into structured feedback
    • Collect online survey results that are trustworthy
    • Gain actionable public input to support your plans

    For professional planners, AICP CM continuing education credits are available from the American Planning Association for watching this on-demand webinar. We hope you enjoy it!

    Watch the webinar now
  • [SUCCESS] MaineDOT Launches MetroQuest Survey for Its 2050 Long Range Transportation Plan

    [SUCCESS] MaineDOT Launches MetroQuest Survey for Its 2050 Long Range Transportation Plan

    We’re excited to celebrate the launch of a new MetroQuest Site! The Maine Department of Transportation (DOT) is inviting residents to provide public input for the State’s Long Range Transportation Plan Update.

    The results from this survey will help shape the future of transportation across Maine through to 2050, with a focus on providing the safest and most reliable transportation system possible.

    Maine, not unlike the rest of the United States, is experiencing several issues affecting transportation. Public input from this survey will provide guidance and insight on the strategies needed to achieve MaineDOT’s transportation goals by supporting a data-driven approach to address the many challenges facing the State over the next 20-30 years.

    Let’s take a look inside their MetroQuest Site!

    The online public survey was designed around the 8 key trends that MaineDOT anticipates will impact transportation in upcoming years: the aging population, labor markets, global trade, urbanization, tourism, technology, safety, and climate. Residents of Maine are being asked to comment on these issues and to rank the top 5 most influential trends.

    The issues selected by survey participants here determine what questions each participant is asked on the following MetroQuest Screen, creating an individualized survey experience that’s customized to each participant’s interests and priorities.

    MaineDOT chose the Strategy Rating Screen to allow residents to rate how effective they feel various strategies could be in dealing with the trends they prioritized. For example, if they ranked “Evolving Technology” as an important trend, they are able to rate 5 different potential ways to make transportation more intelligent, including autonomous vehicles, smart infrastructure, ride-hailing, shared mobility, and electric vehicles.

    The data collected with the Strategy Rating Screen will help MaineDOT make the right transportation investments in areas that the public supports.

    As all planners know too well, transportation budgets are finite, so it’s important for residents to understand that investments in certain areas will affect fund availability for other projects. MaineDOT chose the Tradeoff Screen next to educate residents about their options. Participants must decide, for example, between improving safety and signage or investing in new intelligent technologies to make travel more safe and secure.

    Participants are providing more informed input on the issues while gaining a better appreciation of the limitations to their decisions … there may not be budget or time for every possible solution.

    Demographic questions are presented at the end (rather than at the start) of the survey experience, when participants are most invested and therefore most likely to provide personal information. With data about the geolocation of residents (via zip codes) and their current transportation behavior, MaineDOT will have the information needed to best address the needs and preferences of different communities.

    MaineDOT anticipates the final plan to be complete late this fall. We’re eager to see how the actionable results from this public involvement effort will help shape their next LRTP!

    Do you want to experience this online survey firsthand? You can explore the sample survey here (note that no data will be submitted by using this demo version): https://mainelongrangeplan2050-demo.metroquest.com/

  • [WEBINAR] Online Public Engagement Playbook with Austin Department of Transportation

    [WEBINAR] Online Public Engagement Playbook with Austin Department of Transportation

    Austin, America’s #1 boomtown, is a leader in many areas and now they can add online public engagement to the list! This webinar video is your chance to learn best practices from one of the top online public engagement case studies we’ve seen in 2018. Find out how the City of Austin engaged 5,100+ citizens online to help inform the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan, its first locally-focused comprehensive transportation plan.

    Join Liane Miller, AICP and Planning & Policy Manager with Austin’s Transportation Department, as she shares winning elements of her team’s online public engagement playbook. Learn how they combined great online engagement with the right promotional strategy to involve thousands of people, including communities that have been underrepresented in past processes. Discover which of three transportation scenarios earned the most public support.

    Online Public Engagement Playbook On-Demand Webinar

    Watch this complimentary webinar recording to learn how to:

    • Reach more people, even with limited staff
    • Share and collect richer planning information by going online
    • Leverage business partnerships to lower barriers to engagement
    • Mine survey results to build a plan that works for all communities
    • Impress decision makers with a transportation plan informed by the people

    We would like to thank our webinar sponsors: NCDD and APA! An AICP CM credit is available for watching this on-demand educational webinar.

    Over 800 planners and public engagement professionals registered for this popular live event. You can now watch the recording at your convenience.

    Watch the webinar now
  • [AWARD] MetroQuest Celebrates TRB Winner – Congratulations MnDOT!

    [AWARD] MetroQuest Celebrates TRB Winner – Congratulations MnDOT!

    Every year, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) searches for the best public involvement case studies for it’s popular “John and Jane Q. Public Competition.” This year, we are thrilled to share that the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has taken home the grand prize for their innovative public involvement work on their Statewide Multimodal Transportation Plan and the Minnesota 20-Year State Highway Investment Plan!  

    The agency used MetroQuest for online public engagement throughout the process, including the use of tablet-based engagement at innovative community events.  

    This year’s theme for the TRB competition, “Communicating the Value of Long-Term Transportation Planning,” is close to our hearts since MetroQuest has become the public involvement software of choice for transportation agencies across the country. We’re pleased to see that our clients are getting the recognition they deserve for their outstanding public involvement results. 

    The TRB calls their effort, “jam-packed with innovative tools and techniques” and cites their success at reaching a broad demographic including underserved communities. Congratulations to MnDOT for an outstanding showcase of how technology can be leveraged to increase public involvement and collect meaningful community input to inform transportation plans.  

    The TRB understands how challenging it is to engage the public on long range transportation plans. 

    “It’s extremely difficult to get the average person involved in long-term transportation planning. After all, developing long-term transportation plans, such as regional transportation plans or strategic citywide mobility studies are much less precise and often have much longer implementation periods than plans for a particular transport infrastructure.…But early and on-going involvement by John and Jane Q. Public is just as crucial for long-term transport planning as for planning specific transport facilities. To stimulate creative thinking and share innovative approaches, the Planning and Environment Group of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) sought best practices in communicating the value and importance of getting the public involved in long-term transportation planning.” 

    Congratulations to MnDOT for your outstanding win! The whole team at MetroQuest is celebrating your success! 

    Here are some resources if you’d like to learn more: 

    MetroQuest Case Studies 

    TRB John and Jane Q. Public Competition  

  • [WEBINAR] Best in Show: Public Participation at APA NPC18

    [WEBINAR] Best in Show: Public Participation at APA NPC18

    Get the key takeaways and discover new insights from 34 sessions on public engagement at APA NPC18!

    Did you miss some of the 34 fabulous sessions on public participation at APA’s 2018 National Planning Conference in New Orleans? This fast paced 30-minute webinar features insights from three planning veterans freshly back from the conference.   Join Michelle Nance AICP, Planning Director at Centralina Council of Governments, Stephen Stansbury AICP, National Mobility Planning Practice Leader at Kimley-Horn, and Dave Biggs, Chief Engagement Officer at MetroQuest. They offer key takeaways, best new insights, and thoughts on trends to follow in 2018. They also share key findings from their APA NPC18 interactive workshop “Public Engagement Gone Wild? Taming Tactics!”

    Watch the Webinar Now

    Thank you to our sponsors: NCDD and APA! An AICP CM credit is available for watching this on-demand webinar. 


    Whether you missed conference entirely or just some of the 34 sessions on the topic of public participation, this complimentary webinar is for you. Over 740 planners registered for this live webinar – enjoy the recording today!