Practices for Online Public Involvement (2019) / Chapter Skim
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15 Using Qualtrics survey software, a 48-question survey was emailed to all 50 state DOTs on February 6, 2018, regarding OPI with a 1-month window for completion of the survey. The survey was developed by the project team from Rutgers POET with guidance, direction, feedback, and revisions from the members of the Topic Panel.
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16 Practices for Online Public Involvement Reasons for Use of OPI The ability to communicate efficiently and the ability to reach more people were the most common reasons reported for choosing any OPI method. Transparency was the third-most common reason overall, followed distantly by considering OPI to be an important new communications medium and reaching specific populations.
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Results 17 If the tools used are not effective, we need to do something different. If there is a public meeting and no one shows up, we need to do something different.
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18 Practices for Online Public Involvement Institutional Support for OPI During the interviews, DOT staff were asked if internal support influences the use of OPI methods at their agency. All interviewees cited support from upper-level management as key to their agency's initial and continuing use of OPI.
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Results 19 project-specific PIPs are "more or less robust depending on the level of impact a project is anticipated to have." Categorical Exclusion (CE) -level projects may require a minimal plan, while projects that require an Environmental Assessment (EA)
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20 Practices for Online Public Involvement The use of online public meetings, video streaming of public meetings, discussion forums, mobile applications, crowd mapping, and online scenario building and testing was less common, comprising 25.9% of the OPI methods used across all DOT activities from survey respondents. Figure 4 shows which OPI methods are most commonly used depending on the DOT activity.
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Results 21 particularly for construction projects. However, many of these were examples of one-way information dissemination rather than two-way interactions.
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22 Practices for Online Public Involvement responding to or accepting feedback received through social media. Instead, it uses social media to direct constituents to other opportunities for involvement and input.
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Results 23 Breakdown of OPI Methods by DOT Activity DOTs reported the greatest use of OPI methods to support projects. Of the 546 reported instances (see details of these instances in Appendix C)
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24 Practices for Online Public Involvement We used an online survey for the project Woodruff Road congestion relief in Greenville, SC. It was early in the process so we wanted to gauge where the public's main concerns were before we put down any alternatives.
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Results 25 OPI to Supplement In-Person Outreach As shown in Figure 7, most OPI methods are used to supplement traditional or face-to-face forms of involvement and are rarely used as stand-alone methods. Eight survey respondents described the use of real-time virtual meetings or discussion forums to supplement in-person public meetings.
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26 Practices for Online Public Involvement OPI for Targeted Outreach Over half of DOTs surveyed use OPI methods to reach specific populations. As shown in Figure 8, DOTs most commonly use OPI tools to target urban populations (19)
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Results 27 public, and 14 reported slow internet access among members of the public. Online trolling was reported as a challenge by 13 respondents.
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28 Practices for Online Public Involvement involvement. Conversely, California DOT described successfully using OPI methods to reach rural populations due to widespread internet access, networking, and existing relationships.
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Results 29 • Effective Communication: Survey respondents described how OPI methods create effective communication channels between DOTs and constituents that yield transparent, direct, and meaningful interactions. Measuring Effectiveness DOTs use various metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of OPI tools on public involvement outputs.
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30 Practices for Online Public Involvement In some DOTs, public involvement staff are part of the department of planning, engineering, or environmental review, while the communications department is separate. In these cases, there is a great deal of coordination and collaboration between the public involvement staff and the communications department.
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Results 31 Use of Consultants Of the 39 DOTs that use OPI, 31 (80%) reported using external consultants to assist in implementing OPI strategies.
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32 Practices for Online Public Involvement Increase in Feedback DOTs noted that OPI methods attract a larger pool of participants, generating more feedback from a broader range of constituents. Texas DOT received an "almost overwhelming amount of input" using OPI for a project.
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Results 33 We have legal requirements written into state code that require traditional newspaper advertising for public involvement hearings and willingness processes. There are also concerns about accurately receiving and documenting public input during public comment timeframes.
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