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Scenario Planning Peer Workshop - Orlando, FL

Sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration

Location: Orlando, Florida

Date: December 9, 2004

Workshop Host Agencies:

Federal Highway Administration, Florida Division Office

Florida Department of Transportation

Florida Metropolitan Planning Organization Advisory Council

Workshop Participants:

Center for Urban Transportation Research

Envision

Envision Utah

Federal Highway Administration, Florida Division Office

Federal Highway Administration, Office of Planning

Federal Highway Administration Resource Center

Florida Department of Transportation

Florida-Alabama, Okaloosa-Walton, and Bay County TPOs

Gainesville Transportation Planning Organization

Hillsborough MPO

Idaho Transportation Department

Kimley-Horn and Associates

Lake-Sumter MPO

Martin County MPO

METROPLAN Orlando

Metropolitan Planning Organization Advisory Council

Miami-Dade MPO

Orange County Planning Division

Palm Beach County MPO

Pinellas County MPO

Polk Transportation Planning Organization

US DOT Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

Volusia County MPO

Wasatch Front Regional Council

Summary

The following report summarizes a Peer Workshop on tools and effective practices for scenario planning. The Workshop was coordinated and supported by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The FHWA Florida Division Office hosted this one-day forum in Orlando. The objective of the forum was to provide participants with an overview of the scenario planning process, share examples of scenario planning efforts from elsewhere in the country, describe available resources and tools to assist with scenario planning analysis, and to brainstorm ideas for the Orlando region and State of Florida.

I. Introduction

Sherry Ways of the FHWA Office of Planning opened the Workshop by presenting an overview of scenario planning and the FHWA's role in supporting its use.

Scenario planning is a process in which transportation professionals and citizens work together to analyze and shape the long-term future of their communities. Using a variety of tools and techniques, participants in scenario planning assess trends in key factors such as transportation, land use, demographics, health, economic development, environment, and more. The participants bring the factors together in alternative future scenarios, each of these reflecting different trend assumptions and tradeoff preferences. In the end, all members of the community-the general public, business leaders, and elected officials-reach agreement on a preferred scenario. This scenario becomes the long-term policy framework for the community's evolution, and is used to guide decision-making.

Discussing the benefits of effective scenario planning, Ways noted that it:

• provides an analytical framework and process for analyzing complex issues and responding to change;
• facilitates consensus building by giving communities the capacity to participate actively in planning,
• includes tools to assess transportation's impact on communities;
• improves communication and understanding in a community; and
• yields an enhanced decision making framework for a community and ensures better management of increasingly limited resources.

FHWA is offering technical support, information, and research to state and local partners as they undertake scenario planning. Recent efforts include:

• FHWA-funded scenario planning initiatives in Utah, Virginia, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, and California;
• a National Peer Roundtable of policymakers, community leaders, and technical experts, that discussed the keys to effective scenario planning (Washington, D.C. September 25, 2003);
• University of Utah Scenario Planning Research (November 2003);
• Scenario Planning Video Conference with three FHWA Divisions (January 2004);
• American Planning Association (APA) Federal Planning Division Workshop (April 2004);
• APA National Conference Workshop (April 2004);
• FHWA coordination and support of FHWA/FTA Peer Workshops on scenario planning in New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii (2004);
• Efforts in FY 2005 include: funding the Coalition for Utah's Future's "2005 Greater Wasatch Land Use and Transportation Vision;" completion of University of Utah Scenario Planning Study; a national broadcast on scenario planning scheduled for March 3; funding the Sacramento Area Council of Government's (SACOG) "Blueprint Project;" and conducting four new workshops, in Florida, Illinois, Iowa, and North Carolina.

II. State and Local Planning Efforts

A. Florida Department of Transportation

Kathy Neill, Intergovernmental Programs Administrator, Florida Department of Transportation

Florida faces several significant long-range trends that must be considered today. The state's population has been increasing at about 2.3% per year over the past 30 years. Growth is expected to continue at that rate over the next 30 years, eventually adding 8 million people to Florida's current population of 17 million. This growth will not be evenly dispersed over the entire state: the population growth in Florida's eight economic regions (Figure 1) over the next twenty years will vary between 28 and 71 percent of their current levels. This population is also older than the US average, which reinforces the need to provide travel alternatives. Tourism also continues to grow, with domestic tourists outnumbering international tourists eight to one.

These changes are expected to have a variety of effects on Florida's transportation systems. Expanding population and visitor levels will generate rising demand for passenger travel via all modes. Demand for all types of transportation will generally grow more rapidly than population over the next two decades. The rising demand for the movement of freight will also outpace population growth, and the growth in freight tonnage movement will vary across modes. In order from greatest to least, growth will occur in airline freight, truck, rail, and seaport freight. Person hours of delay on the state's roadways will outpace the rise in daily vehicle miles traveled, meaning that there will be more congestion on Florida's intrastate highway system. The percentage of workers crossing county lines to get to work has increased in Florida since 1990, with some counties and regions significantly outpacing others in this regard.

Safety is also a major concern. While the rate of deaths on Florida's roads per vehicle mile traveled has been decreasing over the past 20 years, the total number of deaths annually has been on the rise. Florida is also home to many of the most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians in the nation, based on Surface Transportation Policy Project's "Mean Streets" study.

Though Florida faces other significant challenges related to energy usage and habitat protection, Florida is now designated as an air quality attainment area, which represents a significant accomplishment.

B. Gainesville MPO

Marlie Sanderson, Director of Transportation Planning, Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization (Gainesville)

Left unabated, Gainesville threatens to grow uncontrolled toward the west and farther away from the downtown. In response to growing evidence of an interaction between transportation and land use where changes in one is believed to affect the other, Gainesville's MPO, the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization, prepared a Livable Community Reinvestment Plan. To gain public involvement and garner public support, Gainesville used a scenario planning approach to formulate this plan.

Four scenarios were tested:

• the status quo "Westward Growth Concept;"
• the opposite of this concept, the "Compact Area Concept" where activity centers are confined to a compact area;
• a "Town/Village Centers Concept" where activity centers are linked by activity corridors; and
• a "Radial Development Concept" where primary and secondary corridors activity centers are connected.

In the end, a hybrid scenario was selected for the plan. This scenario includes a walkable downtown, a number of mixed use nodes, and one corridor loaded with transit. Partly as a result of the plan, Gainesville implemented a growth boundary on the west side of the city. Lessons learned from this experience include:

• Scenario planning is a great visioning tool for considering how transportation investments affect, and are affected by, land use decisions.
• Agencies should be clear that land use planning is the responsibility of local governments and not MPOs.
• Good data and robust models are key for this kind of undertaking.
• This process garnered considerable interest and curiosity from elected officials and other citizens.

III. Panelist Planning Practices and Observations

A. Envision Utah

Ted Knowlton, Planning Director, Envision Utah

Background

Envision Utah is a non-profit formed in 1997 to evaluate growth issues in Utah. Eighty-five percent of its funding comes from private sources. Envision Utah's initial process in 1997 created a clear civic view of transportation and growth in the area. Some of the agencies that they worked with on this effort included Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Transit Authority. The plan that they created focused on sub-areas within the valley, and each local government adopted the plan as an addendum to their general plans. Their effort also won the American Planning Association's Daniel Burnham Award and the Urban Land Institute's Award for Excellence.

Planning Process

In Utah, there is no regional government, state land-use planning was rejected by a public vote, and a culture of local control and private property rights is engrained in the political culture. Many other states are similar to Utah in these regards. In response to this situation, Envision Utah created a public involvement methodology with the following principles:

• look beyond ourselves and immediate challenges,
• involve a broad cross section to develop ideas from grassroots,
• provide good information on the advantages and disadvantages of different solutions, and
• trust the public - be committed to what they come up with from the beginning.

Envision Utah considers the following four groups as part of the "Communication Pyramid" (Figure 2) that should be involved in the planning process: regional stakeholders, local stakeholders (e.g., mayors, councilors), active citizens (people who sometimes come to meetings and always vote and take surveys), and the general public. Regional stakeholders should be people like large landowners who are affected by and can implement the plan. This group should also be as diverse as possible. Business leaders are very valuable; they want to see the big picture - quality of life issues - and if they are sold on any given scenario, then the politicians will agree with them. Do not settle for getting the number two person in the local government involved; the mayor needs to be involved so that the media will pay attention and so that people will become interested in the process. Envision Utah's 1997 effort involved the Governor, the owner of the Utah Jazz, the President and COO of Geneva Steel, the CPO for American Stores, the Sandy City Mayor, and Utah County Commissioners. To get active citizens and the general public involved, personalized, hand-signed invitations from the mayor of the citizens' home towns to attend scenario planning workshops proved highly effective, even more so than regular advertising.

Over 2,000 people were involved in workshops that were held throughout the 10-county region. The workshop exercise consisted of:

1. Purposely grouping people so that there was a random mix of people in each group,
2. Shading out areas on a map where the group does not want to see the region grow into,
3. Choosing a starter set of chips that represents various density possibilities (a compact and walkable set, a hybrid set with high infill, a set that represents the current trend with some compact development, and a low density set that represents the current trend - participants are shown images to represent what each type of chip would look like) to accommodate the growth that the region will see over the next couple of decades,
4. Trading these chips,
5. Arranging the chips on the map, and
6. Drawing in roads and transit needed to serve the areas where the chips are placed (once again, participants are shown images to represent the different types of transportation options).

Each group's map was then put into GIS to create layers of density for maps of the region. These maps were then grouped to represent four different visions of growth for the region. Images and maps of these visions of growth were then generated and brought back to the public for their input via videos, mailings, inserts, and polling. Presented with this information, most people liked the scenarios that represented more infill, redevelopment, and growth on new land focused into walkable, transit-oriented communities.

Conclusions and Observations

This process had a number of advantages. In the workshops, Envision Utah found that the big geography represented by the large map and a long timeframe brings people and the random mix of people in each group together. Envision Utah also found that by having to choose where to put chips but not being able to put them on shaded areas, people had to reconcile in their own minds their desire for low-density housing and open spaces. Once this civic view became clear, local officials were able to see what their citizens wanted. Through their work with the region as a whole and sub-areas within the region, Envision Utah found that scenario planning is scalable to whatever size. Planning agencies that decide on a plan through analysis and research, educate the public about the solution, and then announce the plan to the public usually find that they have to then defend the plan and the agency itself. Because the scenario planning approach gathers up the vision from the grassroots and refines it, it is not necessary to defend it because it should already have broad-based support.

Several lessons were learned by Envision Utah throughout the process. The scenario planning process needs to be transparent with trustworthy models as the backbone. Getting people to become emotionally involved is important to get them to buy in to the process and its outcome. To accomplish this, Knowlton suggests that visuals should be used whenever possible and tricky words such as "dense" should be avoided; instead, use words such as "compact" and "walkable." Also, communicate to stakeholders and the public based on values. Last, the sheer number of supporters who are part of a process like this will overcome a small but loud opposition.

B. Wasatch Front Regional Council

George Ramjoue, Planning Manager, Wasatch Front Regional Council (Salt Lake City Region's MPO)

Background

Population growth in Salt Lake City is physically constrained by Utah Lake, the Great Salt Lake, two mountain ranges, and the desert (Figure 3). While desert conditions exist in the area, some sections of the mountains occasionally receive more than 500" of snow a year. Despite these extremes, the area's population is growing 2 to 2$fract12; percent annually and vehicle miles traveled are increasing at two to three times that rate. Currently, a substantial amount of money must be spent on the infrastructure of the transportation system to keep up with demand. Because the region cannot afford this, they are trying to link transportation and land use planning to alleviate the pressure for growth.

Planning Process

For many years, Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC) has followed a traditional model for planning, piecing together the local land use plans and developing a transportation plan within that framework. Recently, WFRC decided to be proactive by getting local governments to buy into developing a regional plan that links land use and transportation. Accordingly, WFRC has partnered with Envision Utah to employ a visioning approach to transportation planning in the region. Visioning is a component of the scenario planning process that helps the public identify what it wants to see in the region's future. WFRC decided to approach Envision Utah because they wanted to make their long range transportation plan better, and they identified Envision Utah as a valuable local resource. Their partnership started in a group setting with a number of other agencies in the area. After raising some funds, they created a memorandum of agreement and started working together.

WFRC wants to undertake an Envision Utah-type effort with respect to transportation planning. This effort is projected to take two and a half years. For the first time, WFRC is partnering with the MPO to the south, the Mountainland Association of Governments (MAG), in this effort in order to be more regional in its focus. Because there will be a higher public turn out and involvement if local governments become sold on the process and get involved, this coalition of WFRC, MAG, and Envision Utah has been visiting mayors and city councils to get them to identify stakeholders and invite them to the meetings. Leaders of groups that may have specific interests and are large landowners in the area, particularly leaders of the Mormon Church, have been similarly involved in the process.

When selecting a transportation-based scenario during the visioning process, the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario need to be clear so that the stakeholders can make informed decisions. Envision Utah will use a model to process the input from the public to create maps and information that will show the public the impact of each transportation-based scenario on land use. By following this process, people will hopefully see and be sold on the merits of the preferred scenario.

Conclusions and Observations

The biggest asset of visioning is that it expands public involvement tremendously: while few people may show up to discuss a 30-year plan, visioning can involve hundreds and even thousands of citizens. As part of the visioning process, WFRC and Envision Utah hope that people will become aware of problems in the region and will know what they can do to address them. Though the selected vision will form the WFRC's long range transportation plan, implementation of the vision will be difficult unless each of the local governments implement their respective parts of the plan. Denver's MPO, the Denver Regional Council of Governments, came up with a compact, signed by all local governments, that said that each local governmental will conform to the regional plan (available at http://www.drcog.org/index.cfm?page=MileHighCompact). If needed, a similar compact may be created for the Salt Lake City region.

C. Idaho Transportation Department

Matt Moore, Co-Manager, Idaho Transportation Department

"Idaho's Transportation Future: Getting There Together" www.idahofuturetravel.info

Planning Process

In 2000, Idaho's Transportation Partners (ITP), a partnership that includes the Idaho Transportation Department and other transportation stakeholder groups, wanted to determine the long-term needs of Idaho's transportation system. The Partners created goals, principles, priorities, and a focus on performance to guide their development of a strategy that would enable them to make this determination and address the transportation needs of the state (Table 1). In sum, the focus was on performance; Idaho wanted to be sure its transportation system would move people, move goods and services, and share information while providing accessibility, convenience and choices, affordability, flexibility, safety and security, predictability, and connectivity.

Table 1: ITP's Long-Term Planning Goals, Principles, and Priorities

ITP's strategy to identify the future needs of Idaho's transportation system included:

• holding an internal symposium to figure out what approach to take;
• holding regional and statewide workshops and distributing surveys to get the public's input;
• using scenario planning, mapping, and town hall polling to help the public see the different possibilities for Idaho's future; and
• implementing the results of the public outreach effort in various plans.

The town hall polling style of scenario planning, where people are able to vote for different possibilities and see the results right in front of them on a computer-generated image, was particularly helpful because the immediate visual changes that this approach yields really helps people understand things they did not understand before. It also helps that the voting is anonymous, so no one is swayed by the opinion of their peers. Based on this strategy, Idaho then created its Vision of Idaho's Transportation Future.

Conclusions and Observations

Based on ITP's experience, Moore related a number of lessons learned and reasons why Florida should do scenario planning. For scenario planning to be successful, it is important to ensure that there is functional diversity, independent advocacy, scenario adventures, decentralization, performance measurement, and good methods for aggregation. Also, it is important to ensure that the finished document is digestible; the Vision of Idaho's Transportation Future ended up being just 15 pages long. Specific to the lead agency's (or agencies') roles and responsibilities, ITP found that it is important to:

• garner support and interconnect partners;
• recognize and research all modes;
• explore regional and statewide scenarios;
• focus on common principles and priorities;
• develop focal areas, strategies, and action plans; and
• do no harm to the public's health, safety, and welfare.

Issues specific to Florida that scenario planning can help address include highway safety, sea level rise due to climate change, population growth, and an aging population. Lessons learned from Idaho's scenario planning process that will help address these and other issues include:

• know that long-term planning leads to short-term focuses;
• implement as much as possible now to ensure that the selected vision will be attained;
• start with low-hanging fruit - do what is easiest and least expensive but has noticeable outcomes first;
• be sure everyone knows why they should do scenario planning;
• address assumptions early in the process;
• focus on the execution cost;
• remember that groups are smarter than the smartest people in them and that different personal contexts are critical; and
• use technology and problem-solving approaches throughout the scenario planning process.

D. Scenario Planning Tools

Brian Betlyon, Metropolitan Planning Specialist, FHWA Resource Center

Given that the premise of scenario planning is that it is be tter to "get the future imprecisely right" than to "get the future precisely wrong" when developing transportation plans, tools can help people involved in scenario planning get the future as "imprecisely right" as possible. Scenario planning can also help communities plan by design instead of by default, meaning that they can make informed decisions on how the actions (or inaction) that they take today will affect the future.

A variety of technology tools can help communities consider scenarios and make better decisions. Betlyon provided examples of several different kinds:

• information resources, including websites such as http://www.placematters.com, http://www.smartgrowthamerica.com, http://www.sustainable.doe.gov, http://www.fgdc.gov, and http://egis.hud.gov/egis/
• visualization tools and techniques, such as photo montage, architectural drawings, visual preference surveys, kiosks, and Box City;
• impact analysis and GIS modeling using software such as INDEX, Paint the Town, What If?, MetroQUEST, UrbanSim, and CommunityViz; and
• process tools and techniques such as civic participation, the PLACE³S process developed in California, and methods for finding common ground. For example, establish a neutral community meeting place, conduct large-scale town meetings, or establish a civic learning center.

Betlyon presented several examples of how scenario planning has been used. The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission is using scenario planning to assist in development of a new long-range plan for the Philadelphia area. In Charlottesville, Virginia the Jefferson Area Eastern Planning Initiative created a modeling tool capable of concurrently evaluating transportation and land use options, known as CorPlan. Using CorPlan Scenarios, they developed a 50-year transportation and land use vision for the five-county region surrounding Charlottesville. Envision Utah, a public-private partnership "working to keep Utah beautiful, prosperous and neighborly for future generations," involved over 100 partners and the general public in a statewide scenario planning effort.

E. MetroQUEST Software

Dave Biggs, Co-Founder, Envision

Background

Started in the late 1980s, MetroQUEST was developed to help decisionmakers involve the public in the decision making process. The idea behind MetroQUEST was to make the process fun and engaging for the public. After ten years of development at the University of British Columbia, developers succeeded in creating a model that could show the future impacts of current decisions and trends on a real city. MetroQUEST then became a tool to get people together in a workshop setting so that they could see the effects of their choices on the future of their hometown.

Planning Process

While the tool has been used around the world, Biggs used Vancouver, British Columbia, as an example to show how MetroQUEST works. Vancouver faces significant growth over the next few decades, but is physically constrained by land and water and its citizens want Vancouver to retain its core values. At public workshops, the goal is to use the model to formulate an idea of the type of trends the public wants to see by asking them questions and having them see the impacts of their answers on the future in real-time. As a first step, Vancouver citizens saw on a map of the region and in various quality of life indicators how current growth trends will transform Vancouver over the next 10, 20, 30 and 40 years. Next, citizens were asked what they wanted to see over the same timeframes. After compiling their responses into various scenarios, workshop participants we able to instantly see the impacts of their choices visually over 40 years. The model showed the public the impacts of the decisions they made on the map of the region (Figure 4) and in the indicators about which they most care. Because their choices are linked to consequences, people found that some of their desires were incongruent with each other and they needed to reconcile what was most important to them and what tradeoff needed to be made to achieve success on their highest priorities. By showing people the outcomes of their assumptions in real-time, the process engaged the participants and created public buy-in for both the process and the plan that emerged from the process.

Conclusions and Observations

Biggs noted other benefits of the model as well. Citizens, for example, were able to see the interaction of transportation and land use. The model was able to show how locating higher densities along transportation corridors resulted in better quality of life indicators than if they were located elsewhere. The model is also able to capture other synergies, such as compact housing for seniors along transit routes, to create more win-win situations. To get public buy-in to the process, it is important to show the public that their most important concerns are being considered. By showing the public the list of the factors that are considered by the model and how their decisions impact their concerns, the public quickly becomes engaged in the process. Using the model is also non-partisan: people become involved once they see that their values - whether they are about the environment, the economy, or what they want for their children - will be impacted by their decisions. The more people that become involved, the more media coverage the process attracts, and more people thereby become involved. A web-based version of the model also allowed people to email their preferred scenario to their government representative.

General lessons learned include the fact that some concerns can be included and projected, but some, like crime, cannot. People need to know this up front; however, crime can still be considered independently. For example, you can discuss the impact of the various elements of scenarios on crime, like how higher densities along transportation corridors might impact crime rates. Additionally, it is important to:

• engage stakeholders in scenario planning,
• foster dialog based on values and priorities so you can talk about them and address them in the model,
• educate participants on the costs and benefits of alternative futures,
• gather feedback on desired futures and acceptable tradeoffs, and
• win support for smarter plans.

IV. Opportunities for Action

Participants broke into two groups to discuss issues surrounding scenario planning. One group concentrated on efforts at the state level and the other group discussed efforts at the regional level.

One breakout group discussed ways that scenario planning could be applied at the state level in Florida. First, the group identified the following opportunities (broadly grouped by topic, Table 2).

Challenges

Questions and issues that the group identified as needing to be addressed before or in concert with undertaking some of the above actions at the state level include:

• Is the state willing to accept public input into the FTP development once it is received?
• Due to time constraints of the FTP process, scenario planning in its traditional sense is not possible.
• What will be the level of incorporation of new Federal Transit Administration guidelines into the FTP (e.g., modeling)?
• What is the level of involvement with Department of Defense/Homeland Security Partners in the FTP development process?
• As the number of MPOs increase, and regional models develop, how can the state promote regional cooperation? Including a MPO/regional element to forums may help address this.

Table 2: State Level Scenario Planning Opportunities

Regional Level

The other break-out group brainstormed ways that scenario planning could be used at the regional level.

Opportunities

This break-out group identified a number of opportunities for integrating scenario planning into Florida's regional planning efforts as well as places where scenario planning efforts are already underway. These opportunities and places include:

• Volusia County MPO's public involvement technique termed "Strings and Ribbons" (http://www.vcmpo2025.com/input_strings.html);
• Indian River MPO's work on its long range transportation plan, which will utilize an extensive visioning component to identify a series of alternative land use growth scenarios (http://www.ircgov.com/Visioning/About_LRTP.htm);
• Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, which contracted Renaissance Planning to lead a Regional Land Use Study in Martin and St. Lucie Counties. This study was unique in that it took a corridor-specific approach by evaluating alternative land use and transportation scenarios to avoid building major interchanges along a heavily-traveled stretch of US Highway 1 (http://www.asu.edu/caed/proceedings02/BLANTON/blanton1.htm);
• Orlando's METROPLAN 2025 long range transportation plan, which used a experimental land use concept with 20 different criteria to predict future growth and impacts;
• Central Florida's Envision Utah-like initiative called myregion (http://www.myregion.org). Specifically, PennDesign from the University of Pennsylvania has been commissioned by myregion to analyze current growth patterns and forecast alternative growth patterns for the future;
• Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) licensed a "Florida template version" of INDEX (http://sustainable.state.fl.us/fdi/fscc/resource/fscn-gis.html);
• University of Florida's Florida Geographic Data Library (FGDL), which is a mechanism for distributing satellite imagery, aerial photographs and spatial (GIS) data throughout the state of Florida (http://www.fgdl.org/);
• Central Florida MPO Alliance's work on their LRTPs;
• Orange County's Avalon South Sector Plan; and
• Committee for Sustainable Treasure Coast's tools for alternative futures.

More general planning activities that could be used as a starting point for scenario planning include state-mandated evaluation and appraisal reports (EARs) of local comprehensive plans (http://www.dca.state.fl.us/fdcp/dcp/ear/indexear.cfm); Regional Planning Councils' Strategic Regional Policy Plans; multi-county corridor transportation studies; regional partnerships with MPOs, regional Congestion Management Systems, hurricane recovery and coastal redevelopment efforts; the private sector, such as the St. Joe Development Corporation; and utilities.

The group also identified factors and stakeholders that should be considered and involved in scenario planning efforts (Table 3).

Table 3: Scenario Planning Factors and Stakeholders

Challenges

The group then discussed barriers and obstacles to the implementation of scenario planning at the regional level in Florida:

• difficulty in coming up with revenue sources - lack of funding despite demand;
• transportation funding source applicability - transportation policies (state and federal) and state statutes, such as the DRI;
• lack of communications and media support and funds;
• unequal benefits and costs - there is inequality among groups or regions/areas, some cities have restrictive rules and therefore restrictive budgets;
• lack of implementation agreements; visions are not translated into plans - there is a disconnect with day-to-day decision making;
• lack of available data, especially data with consistent formats, and model enhancements;
• parochialism - there is a lack of coordination and a regional mindset in some parts of the state;
• length of time for something to work and the inability to think long-term - apathy, negativity, and resistance to change;
• changes in personnel and political turnover;
• lack of champion(s) and political will;
• personalities involved;
• politics and related changes of priorities over time;
• lack of qualified personnel/consultants and associated training; and
• lack of local success stories.

Next Steps

The regional-level break-out group ended by identifying additional assistance from the FHWA that would be particularly helpful for them to undertake a scenario planning approach:

• disseminate information on tools available - FHWA is developing a fact sheet that will help in this regard;
• continue support to help raise scenario planning's level of visibility;
• train on tools that are already out there;
• discuss scenario planning in the context of MPO certifications;
• provide money/grants - similar to TCSP program;
• show savings of doing scenario planning and pursuing the preferred scenario over the baseline long-term; and
• hold more workshops and conferences to share success stories, maybe for local officials.

V. For More Information

VI. Attachments

A. Agenda

Scenario Planning Peer Workshop
December 9, 2004

B. List of Participants

Presenters

Exchange Attendees

To provide Feedback, Suggestions or Comments for this page, contact Frederick Bowers (frederick.bowers@dot.gov)