Measuring Performance of Public Engagement in Transportation Planning

Abstract

Measuring performance provides a variety of benefits: establishing accountability with the public, enabling management and performance improvements, increasing transparency, and building public trust. The most recent transportation authorization bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, includes a heavy focus on performance measurement. Despite such strong reasons, measuring the performance of public engagement in transportation planning has proved difficult for a variety of issues, including unclear goals, limited funding, and the situational nature of engagement activities. To address some of these issues, the literature of best practices for public engagement in transportation planning is analyzed, and three principles that encapsulate the contained concepts are derived. The three principles include accessible events, engaging interactions, and an outcome-oriented process. The author developed a performance scorecard rubric to operationalize the three principles. The scorecard provides an intuitive and concise method to measure and display performance information. This paper organizes the disparate and fragmented literature of recommended practices into a usable framework that enables practitioners to understand more easily the important aspects of public engagement and to better measure the performance of engagement activities. The paper also advances the discourse surrounding public engagement and performance measurement. Additional study would provide opportunities for further refinement and investigation of the efficacy of the system developed in a real-world setting.

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