The Evolution of Public Engagement in Transportation Projects

June 13, 2024

By Chhavi Dhingra, Senior Public Engagement Manager, WSB

Transportation infrastructure and services serve as a means to various ends, such as facilitating trade, accessing jobs, education, healthcare, or social opportunities. It is essential to place people and goods at the core of all transportation planning and design efforts. As transportation engineers navigate the complexities of planning and designing, balancing considerations like traffic flow, safety, environmental concerns, accessibility, equity and integration of new technologies, they must bridge the gap between designs, materials like concrete and steel, and the people these projects aim to serve. Timely information sharing, inclusive engagement to gather diverse perspectives, and empowering community voices can ensure that transportation projects meet their intended goals and benefit everyone.

In today’s era, cities drive growth and progress, yet there is still much work needed to ensure equitable access to this growth. Underserved communities often face challenges of transportation insecurity like affordability, unreliable commutes, lack of access to transportation options to get where they need to, network connectivity, and issues of transportation-related safety and air and noise pollution. This inequity can lead to negative health impacts, exclusion from education, job, healthcare, commercial and social activities, economic inefficiencies, and urban degradation. In such situations, lack of involvement in transportation planning can further hinder these communities’ quality of life.

Fortunately, public engagement in transportation projects has been evolving and is no longer just a box to check on a project. Latest trends in global research and practice in infrastructure projects place high priority on civic engagement and social accountability, especially when responding to crises like climate change or the Covid-19 pandemic, where behavior change at community levels could result in a massive impact. Moreover, legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which are allocating billions of dollars into transportation programs, systems, and infrastructure projects across the country, recognize this as well, and present a huge opportunity for equitable transportation policies and programs to be rolled out by state and local governments. Be it improving transit facilities and experience, re-imagining mobility modes and choices in downtown urban districts or developing infrastructure for vehicle electrification, Governments and communities are now recognizing the need for this pivot, and public engagement best practices demonstrating innovation and public participation are following suit.

Transportation projects are now required to factor in the inclusion of human and environmental factors as part of feasibility assessments. For example, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, requires that federal agencies assess the potential environmental effects of proposed activities in a publicly available report and that the assessment process includes opportunities for public engagement. Given NEPA’s inherently layered institutional design, the level of agency level discretion and the fact that Environmental justice (EJ) itself is an evolving concept, there is a promising opportunity for agencies to enable public engagement to spread its wings fully to bring in a stronger equity focus on transportation projects.

How WSB Can Help

At WSB, we bring diverse professional skills, including those in transportation engineering, planning, public policy, construction management, business administration, and marketing and communications, to bridge the gap between technical designs and the community. We are open-minded learners, constantly evolving our strategies and tactics in consultation with our clients and partners. By allowing public engagement to shape both individual growth and organizational direction, we ensure projects support the needs of the people they serve.