Building Support for a New Transportation Funding and Financing Program:Linking Investments to Stakeholder Priorities through Collaboration and Economic Impact Analysis

摘要

The transportation community is well aware of the universal problem of (a) infrastructureinvestment needs, associated funding requirements and the need for more flexible financingapproaches, and (b) public uncertainty over the efficacy of investing in transportation as opposedto other uses of their money. These are long-standing issues regardless of economic cycles, andthey relate to both the state of infrastructure needs, shifting economic and demographic patterns,and public desires for public processes that are fair, equitable, efficient and transparent.Recognizing these challenges, the Kansas Department of Transportation embarked on amulti-year experiment to reinvent transportation planning and project selection processes in aneffort to achieve greater support through stakeholder consultation, collaboration, and adoption ofimproved and expanded methods for ranking and selecting projects that appeal to broader issuesof public concern (such as job creation) instead of merely engineering measures of need.Seven years of experimentation in consultation, collaboration and revising processesprovides many lessons for the transportation community which may be applicable in whole or inpart for other state or regional transportation agencies. This paper critically examines themethods and tools used by KDOT, including surveys, road rallies, collaborative planning efforts,social media outreach, economic impact analysis and expanded project selection processes.Taken together, this work has produced a positive outcome with the Kansas Legislature havingrecently funded a new 10-year transportation improvement program.