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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

April/May 2005

Update: Outreach Excellence

Participant

The draft plan elicited a cascade of comments at meetings and via the Web.

MTC established a new standard for outreach excellence with its public involvement campaign for development of the Transportation 2030 Plan.

After kicking off the process with a regional summit in June 2003 that drew an overflow crowd of nearly 500 to San Francisco's historic Palace Hotel, MTC embarked on an ambitious — and highly successful — effort to involve people from all walks of life in the development of a comprehensive plan that balances the myriad transportation needs of this far-flung region against severely limited financial resources. The public involvement campaign included:

  • a telephone poll of 3,600 residents, both voting and nonvoting;
  • 33 public workshops throughout the region, with a special emphasis on input from lower-income and minority communities;
  • six focus groups with a cross-section of the public (including residents of all nine counties) to allow more in-depth discussion of the major choices and tradeoffs;
  • an interactive online Budget Challenge taken by over 530 visitors to the MTC Web site during Phase 1 of the public involvement campaign, and an interactive survey taken by some 800 computer users during the third and final phase; and
  • an invitation for members of the public to propose new transportation projects and programs directly to MTC — resulting in dozens of new project submissions.

To foster participation among lower-income and minority residents of the Bay Area, MTC contracted with eight community-based organizations to cosponsor Transportation 2030 workshops in targeted neighborhoods around the region. The $5,000 MTC grants covered workshop expenses such as promotion, catering, on-site childcare and translation services.

Such innovative strategies earned the 2030 outreach program top honors in July 2004 in the Transportation Planning Excellence Awards Program cosponsored by the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration and the American Planning Association.
— John Goodwin

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