PLANNING TOPICS

Effective transportation planning requires strategic communication with partners, engagement of stakeholders, and information sharing throughout the process. Collaboration may happen at the local, regional, or national scale, depending on the nature of the particular project. Collaborating with partners and key stakeholders allows planners to capitalize on the expertise of other planners, lessons learned from past projects, and essential local knowledge. When a planner integrates collaboration thoughtfully throughout the planning process, outcomes are more holistic, inclusive, and resilient. Tools such as Planworks have been developed to assist planners with strategic collaboration.

PLANWORKS

PlanWorks is a web resource that supports collaborative decision-making in long-range planning, programming, corridor planning, and environmental review. PlanWorks shows when and how to engage partners and stakeholders. This system can help streamline decisions throughout these phases by assisting practitioners to engage the right people at the right time with the right information.

PlanWorks has four major components:

Decision Guide: A framework identifying the common decisions and opportunities for cooperation in the transportation planning and environmental review process. For each of the Key Decisions, PlanWorks provides policy and stakeholder questions, data needs, case studies and examples, and links to other related decisions.

Assessments: Interactive assessment tools enable practitioners to improve communication and cooperation during plans and projects, as well as expedite project delivery. Assessments can be taken online, or downloaded and used offline collaboratively. Transportation plans and projects are at risk when collaboration is missing or ineffective, but specific barriers are often hard to identify. PlanWorks Assessments help identify existing and anticipated barriers to successful project and plan development - and strategies for overcoming them. The assessments focus on:

• Partner Collaboration
• Stakeholder collaboration
• Expediting project delivery

Applications: A series of relevant topics that provide specific information and approaches for how these topics can be considered in the collaborative decision making framework. The PlanWorks Applications are special topics that provide specific information and approaches for how these topics can be considered in the collaborative decision-making framework. Applications include:

• Bicycles and Pedestrians • Capital Improvement • Economic Development • Freight • Greenhouse Gas Emissions • Human Environment • Land Use • Linking Planning and Operations • Natural Environment and Implementing Eco-Logical • Performance Measures • Planning and Environment Linkages • Public-Private Partnerships • Safety and Security • Stakeholder Collaboration • Streamlining a Congestion Bottleneck Project • Transportation Conformity • Visioning and Transportation

Library: The PlanWorks Library contains additional information to help improve collaboration and the quality of plans and projects, including relevant case studies and reports of successful interagency cooperation in the transportation planning and environmental review process.

PlanWorks can help you:

• Identify and overcome barriers when plans and projects of all scales hit roadblocks.
• Access detailed information about decisions made in long range planning, corridor planning, programming, or environmental review.
• Diagnose specific barriers and develop strategies to address those through improved collaboration.
• Integrate new and emerging topics into the decision-making process.

While PlanWorks is not a mandated product, it helps to support the 1962 Federal-Aid Highway Act, which states that transportation planning and programming should reflect a comprehensive, cooperative, and continuing process. This process is required for initiatives to be eligible for Federal transportation funding.

PlanWorks