Cost-Effective High Performance Local Mobility Study using Structured Public Involvement: Case Study Versailles, KY

摘要

Cities are facing hard choices regarding transportation options. Mobility and accessalternatives entail financial, environmental and other costs that impact different groups indifferent ways. Environmental Justice (EJ) is mandated. Public involvement is essential, and, inthe face of tight budgets, public involvement protocols must be as efficient as possible and theymust offer maximum documented performance. The Structured Public Involvement or SPIprotocol developed by the authors has been applied successfully to a wide range of infrastructureplanning and design questions. These protocols have demonstrated high performance across fourcriteria including C, clarity of design guidance and Q, anonymous real-time stakeholder processevaluations.This research reports on the cost-effective adaptation of an SPI protocol for a local-scalemobility study for Versailles, KY. The integration of public input data into a rational decisionframework is explained. This research demonstrates a practical, efficient and high-performancemethod of involving citizens cost-effectively in local scale mobility option development andevaluation. Using a performance Q-metric of anonymous, real-time participant evaluation atopen public meetings to measure process quality encourages more sustainable outcomes, both interms of engineering outcomes and process legitimacy. Land use decisionmakers found the datauseful. This study demonstrates (a) that high performance public involvement is notdiametrically opposed to small-scale questions or local budgets and (b) that certain EJ aims aresupported by such high performance public involvement delivery. The need for complementaryEJ process and limits to the overall process design are considered.