Learning from Past Pushback
Moein Khanlari and Paul R. Messinger
The City of Edmonton developed a Complete Streets policy to be used in planning, design, and construction of new or existing streets in order to ensure efficient and convenient access for all street users.2 The policy was developed in consultation with internal and external stakeholders through workshops and an online discussion forum. The policy was approved by Edmonton’s City Council in May 2013.3
Context and Catalyst
A Complete Street is a street whose design takes into account its surrounding area context and land use to eventually enable its users to safely move along or across it regardless of their ages, abilities, and transportation modes. The desirable Complete Street has a maximum diversity of user types and transportation modes, accomodating the safe and efficient movement of cyclists, pedestrians, transit users, motorists, buses, and trucks. The ambitious idea of transforming city streets to Complete Streets is being pursued in several major Canadian cities and there are several implemented examples.i This policy was developed subsequent to, and probably in reaction to, negative public sentiment from the 99th Street Rehabilitation case and the Bicycle Routes case.
Figure 8.1 A multi-mode complete street1
Edmonton’s Complete Streets project was developed to provide guidance for the implementation of Edmonton’s Transportation Master Plan (The Way We Move). This policy will affect the planning, design, and construction of new streets or the rehabilitation of existing ones. Edmonton is the fourth city in Canada to adopt such a policy with Calgary being the first.
Planning
The public-involvement process for this project was conducted over a period of one year through a number of workshops with internal and external stakeholders and elicitation of feedback from the general public through an online forum.
Engagement
The workshops and the online forum mainly focused on informing citizens and receiving feedback on draft guidelines. The online forum consisted of two phases.ii In phase I, general feedback was sought on different topics, whereas phase II mostly focused on getting feedback on the prepared Complete streets guidelines draft. Phase I elicited approximately 172 comments. Citizens were able to post their ideas anonymously, but they had to log in to be able to comment on existing posts. Assuming that each of 66 anonymous users who initiated a discussion was a unique visitor, 100 unique individuals participated in phase I of the online forum.iii The top five most active participants left 17, 14, 10, 6, and 5 comments. Phase II elicited approximately 61 comments by 15 unique participants.iv
Impact
The input received from citizens was used in the development of the Complete Streets policy. However, the actual impact of citizens’ input and their contributions to the policy has not been demonstrated after the project’s completion. While demonstration of public impact on decisions is challenging, it could encourage further participation of citizens in decisions that affect them.
Assessment and Learning
The use of an online forum for eliciting public input made the project more available to the general public. Many ideas were put forward by the forum participants and some discussion took place among a few active participants. Discussion of ideas can shed light on their strengths and weaknesses which can provide grounds for a more careful consideration of the ideas that survive such initial examination. Online participation tools can benefit from adding small tweaks and incentives that encourage conversation among participants. This project collected input from citizens and incorporated it in the development of the Complete Streets guidelines.
Despite the existing challenges of demonstrating the impact of citizen input on decision outcomes, creating transparency on how public input maps onto decisions can nurture citizen trust and encourage higher levels of participation. A simple way of achieving this purpose would be to develop an impact tree that takes the received comments and links them to overarching themes which are then linked to the decision outcomes in a tree structure. Such a structure could also identify any public input that was not ultimately used in decision-making, hence allowing decision-makers to easily focus attention on ideas that were not previously used and reassess their relevance, if necessary. To even make the process more transparent to the citizens, the rationale for the adoption of some ideas and dismissal of others could be provided. Making the input-to-outcome path more transparent would allow citizens to see that they were heard, and better exhibit the effort that goes into involving the public.
Sources
1. http://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/city_vision_and_strategic_plan/complete-streets.aspx (accessed October 1, 2016).
2. https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/documents/RoadsTraffic/Edmonton-Complete-Streets-Guidelines_05062013.pdf (accessed October 1, 2016).
3. www.edmonton.ca/city_government/city_vision_and_strategic_plan/complete-streets-history.aspx (accessed October 1, 2016).
_________________________
i http://completestreetsforcanada.ca/map (accessed October 1, 2016).
ii http://completestreets.dialogue-app.com/phase1 (accessed April 1, 2014). See http://www.delib.net/resources/Edmonton_Complete_Streets_Case_Study.pdf (accessed October 1, 2016).
iii Five comments were received via email and posted on the forum by project staff members.
iv Of these, 33 comments came from one user ID. One interesting comment suggested the adoption of a competing strategy, called ‘Pedestrians First’, which puts priority on pedestrians.