INNOVATIVE PLANNING PRACTICES

OVERVIEW

The Wilmington Area Planning Council (WILMAPCO), through its 2019 Transportation Justice (TJ) Plan, developed a model process for transportation equity. Working from a foundation of long-term analysis of environmental justice within their jurisdiction, WILMAPCO—as the metropolitan planning organization for the Wilmington, DE region—targets key areas of need, putting equity at the forefront by incorporating Title VI into its Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and related products. The TJ Plan pulls previously separate efforts—Environmental Justice, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Language Assistance, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—into a single plan, holistically addressing the needs of the community. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), in coordination with WILMAPCO, has developed a case study available on the TPCB website that provides insights about this plan, links to documents crucial to understanding WILMAPCO’s process, and highlights methods for engaging a similar equity model into other transportation planning processes.

WHAT MAKES THIS EFFORT INNOVATIVE?

• Project Prioritization Process: A project prioritization point system ensures that projects addressing the mobility needs of low-income, minority, and accessibility challenged groups rise to the top.
• Regional Progress Report: To track progress toward the goal of more equitable delivery of transportation, WILMAPCO releases regular reports to provide performance indicators for various goals, demonstrate the progress toward each goal, and identify areas of opportunity for further improvement.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: In addition to using guidance from American Planning Association, International Association of Public Participation, and the Urban Institute for engagement with diverse communities, WILMAPCO prioritizes working with community partners and local leaders to build coalitions that improve trust and awareness of the agency. Through this collaboration, WILMAPCO broadened its outreach methods to include phone surveys, pop-up events, and door-to-door sampling.
• 2020 Urban Technology Deserts Report: As outreach and engagement moved online through the pandemic, another realm of inequity emerged: access to technology. This motivated an investigation to discover which populations lacked computers and online access so that outreach could be adjusted to meet the needs of those communities. Additionally, the State of Delaware and United Way used of the Report to support grant funding for supplying students with computers and Broadband connections during the pandemic.
• Public Participation Plan: Recently updated to include engagement strategies focused on low-income and minority communities that emerged from the TJ Plan, the Public Participation Plan demonstrates the ongoing efforts to advance equity practices in the Greater Wilmington Region.

OVERVIEW

The Multi-Modal Planning at the Multi-Jurisdictional Scale project includes multiple resources for planners seeking to improve collaborative planning across multiple planning topic areas, geographies, and modes. These resources will help planners develop collaborative practices and guide strategic planning efforts for multi-jurisdictional projects. This research supports FHWA’s Megaregions portfolio, which promotes efficiency and regional cooperation by identifying best transportation planning practices for key stakeholders seeking to work across jurisdictional boundaries. Megaregion planning is inherently collaborative and emphasizes connectivity through and between stakeholders on environmental, economic, cultural, and infrastructure topics. This project complements existing megaregion research and planning efforts by reinforcing the significant benefits of multi-jurisdictional planning and identifying lessons learned for future cooperative efforts.

The following resources contain small case studies, or profiles, of areas of the country where multiple MPOs have sustained collaborative planning efforts for more than a decade. This project was made possible with funding from FHWA to the American Planning Association (APA) and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech); APA and Georgia Tech completed the project in February 2020.

HOW DO THESE RESOURCES HELP PLANNERS INNOVATE?

• Multi-MPO Planning: A Transportation Practitioner’s Guide provides information on how to build the technical, institutional, and policy capacity of transportation planning organizations to operationalize collaborative planning across multiple MPO planning areas. The Guide includes an introduction to multi-MPO planning and describes the unique benefits and potential challenges to multi-MPO coordination.
• Metrics for Evaluating Multi-MPO Collaboration explores how multiple MPOs can measure progress in achieving interregional planning and programming goals. The report provides a summary analysis of the state of the practice, with a focus on federal requirements for performance-based transportation planning, and a potential framework for measuring interregional collaboration and interregional transportation system performance.
• Sustaining Multi-MPO Collaboration explores the mechanisms and conditions that facilitate collaboration between or among multiple neighboring or proximate MPOs. It provides a summary analysis of the state of the practice and discusses programs and practices that can help strengthen and maximize the value of multi-MPO collaboration.
• The Role of Interregional Issues in Multi-MPO Collaboration provides guidance and information on the specific issues and conditions that motivate long-range planning collaboration between or among multiple neighboring or proximate MPOs. It includes a summary analysis of the state of the practice and discusses specific issue areas that seem the most likely to motivate collaboration between or among MPOs.

Source: San Diego Association of Governments

OVERVIEW

San Diego’s Regional Plan was a recipient of a 2017 Transportation Planning Excellence Award (TPEA), a program run by the FHWA’s Transportation Planning Capacity Building (TPCB) Program. As a TPEA winner, the Regional Plan provides an excellent blueprint for how the San Diego region will grow and how transportation investments will provide greater choices, strengthen the economy, promote a healthy environment, and support the community. Adopted in October 2015, the Plan anticipates investments of over $200 billion over the next 35 years (2050).

WHAT MAKES THE PROJECT INNOVATIVE?

The Regional Plan provides for economic development through transportation improvements. On average, the Plan will spur about $13 billion in additional economic activity per year. Planning transportation improvements with an eye toward economic development ensures that the plan is incorporated into and consistent with greater community growth and development.

The San Diego Association of Governments’ (SANDAG) Plan fosters compact, transit-oriented development patterns and encourages positive environmental outcomes.

• By2050, nearly 82 percent of new housing units will be attached multifamily in urbanized areas near existing or planned public transit.
• SANDAG will invest $258 million in mobility hubs, a nationally recognized strategy, to expand the reach of regional transit.
• The SANDAG Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) will result in greenhouse gas reductions that exceed what the state mandates require.

The planning process involved an extensive and inclusive public outreach effort.

• By making investments in lower-income and minority communities, the Regional Plan gives everyone an opportunity to participate in the economy.
• The involvement effort reached 18,000 to 24,000 people to provide input on the development of the plan and received over 8,000 comments.
• SANDAG partnered with 14 Community Based Organizations to reach communities who traditionally may not have been involved in the planning processes.

SANDAG created a clear method for evaluating the Plan’s progress toward its goals.

• SANDAG identified 23 “performance monitoring indicators.” These indicators will help gauge the Plan’s progress toward an increase in travel choices, expanded access to public transit, improved air quality, a more efficient and innovative use of energy, a stronger economy, and enhanced public health. SANDAG published a Regional Monitoring Report in 2018, and will renew the monitoring report on a four-year cycle.
• A subset of performance measures was identified for the social equity analysis. This analysis will assist in ensuring that benefits and burdens from SANDAG transportation projects are equitably distributed.

The Regional Plan can be accessed here.

OVERVIEW

The Next Generation Scenario Planning Report: A Transportation Practitioner’s Guide provides information on how to scope and design a scenario planning process to best meet the needs or challenges of a community or organization. It includes a summary of the different kinds of scenario futures—probable, desired, and exploratory—and describes how those can be used to address common issues facing transportation organizations. In a constantly changing world, scenario planning is an innovative and useful tool for planners to use to effectively consider multiple potential futures and their impacts.

HOW DOES THE REPORT HELP PLANNERS INNOVATE?

• Emphasizes the importance of clearly setting expectations about the purpose, goals and expected outcomes of a scenario planning process.
• Includes real-world, recent examples of addressing emerging trends, crafting a new vision or desired future, and dealing with uncertainty.
• Provides practitioners with an expansive list of “how-to’s” and a menu of options for incorporating scenario-based planning into the transportation planning processes.
• Enhances the knowledge base of practitioners by offering key considerations for designing a scenario-based process, which leads to informed decision making, resilient plan making, effective plan implementation, and thoughtful consensus building.

OVERVIEW

“Walk. Bike. Thrive!” is a regional walking and biking transportation plan for the Atlanta region and another 2017 TPEA award winner. Adopted in 2016, “Walk, Bike, Thrive!” serves as the active transportation component of the Atlanta Regional Commission's (ARC) long-range transportation plan for the Atlanta Metropolitan Region. This plan may act as a model for communities nation-wide that want to make their regions more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly.

Source: Atlanta Regional Commission

WHAT MAKES THE PROJECT INNOVATIVE?

• The Plan acknowledges the role of both local and regional frameworks of governance to create a strong and coordinated vision for the future. Regional planning allows for connectivity throughout Metro Atlanta, while local planning capitalizes on the expertise of communities to implement effective and place-based networks. Specifically:
  • Project prioritization and the distribution of MPO and federal funding is based on a regional framework for walking and biking.
  • A local toolkit provides information for local communities to build safe, high-quality pedestrian and bicycle networks with policy and program support. The toolkit can be used when localities request MPO funds, develop projects using local funding, and adopt policies relevant to local needs.
• Plan development was guided by a wide range of public input from across the region, including regional surveys, first-person interviews, and regional forums with existing advisory groups.

The regional plan can be accessed here.