The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) has reinvented how it approaches public involvement and the payoff has exceeded even their wildest expectations.

Watch this webinar to hear them tell their story

While transportation matters to residents of all ages, few attend public meetings. Transportation agencies across the country are plagued by declining participation across all planning projects. They’re also struggling with involving a broad demographic.

Public involvement for long range transportation plans (LRTPs) can be particularly challenging. Most people are concerned more about immediate and localized issues. They generally don’t think in terms of long-range policy directions, constraints, and trade-offs that are the subject of the LRTP process.

In fact, last time around MDOT conducted an extensive public involvement effort including over 20 public meetings throughout the state to support its long range plan. A total of 125 people attended, with higher representation from older demographics. MDOT project manager Brad Sharlow described the public input as “very sparse.”

This time around, Michigan DOT went online with the hopes of broadening its outreach to support its new state long range transportation plan (SLRTP). In their webinar, they explain how they joined forces with WSP to engage 6,300 people, from millennials to boomers, to uncover their evolving transportation priorities for the Michigan Mobility 2045 SLRTP. Shane Peck, Anita Richardson, Brad Sharlow, and Kyle Haller share their engagement techniques and what they learned about public preferences for modal tradeoffs, infrastructure investments, intelligent technologies, and transit.

This webinar recording is like a best practices playbook to help other agencies develop and implement public involvement programs for broad and inclusive outreach for LRTPs.

Watch this complimentary on-demand webinar for modern ways to:

• Uncover the transportation priorities of your citizens
• Engage across all age-groups, going beyond the usual suspects
• Gamify transportation education to capture informed public input
• Integrate tech to capture public input at public meetings
• Build resident support and buy-in for meaningful change