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Context Sensitive Solutions Technical Assistance: Minnesota Department of Transportation

Roadmap of Course Improvement Suggestions

After observing the workshop, the SMEs provided feedback on the content of the workshop and discussed recommendations for improving the workshop with the organizers and instructors (detailed above). Overall, the course was very well constructed, with an appropriate duration and quantity of content. Structural modifications are not necessary or recommended. The recommendations relate mainly to the content of the sessions.

The best practices related to standard design and geometric issues were appropriate for Minnesota. The case studies were all effective, vetted, and drawn from throughout Minnesota, which was appropriate for a room full of participants working in Minnesota. The presenters should consider ways to effectively incorporate the concepts of context and design flexibility into case studies discussed during the workshop, or sufficiently explain how to account for them. Participants may have benefited from examples illustrating how other design teams applied the standards, then considered the context, and subsequently revised their designs to ensure flexibility and solutions that saved money and reduced adverse effects. FHWA is working in partnership with the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) to develop a Practitioner’s Guide for Walkable Thoroughfare Design that will provide examples of context sensitive design solutions applicable to urban and suburban roads. The publication is expected to be released in the Fall. Participants may also have benefited from having stakeholders (for example, other agency representatives or outside advocates) in the room to discuss how they can help planners and designers with defining and understanding the context.

Additionally, even though the course was intended to cover flexibility in design, there could have been more substantive discussion around how and why to apply flexibility. The instructors indicated that previous iterations of the course that had more focus on CSS. Consequently, it may be helpful to update the current material with some of the CSS-focused content from prior years. In addition to covering how to define context and how context can influence design, addressing how CSS can be a driver for flexibility throughout the course would be very effective.

The recommendations are as follows:

1. Place a greater emphasis on context and how it impacts design choices. Presenters should facilitate additional discussion around how context issues shaped the design decisions in all the examples described during the presentations. This approach was applied well on the third day during the session about interchanges. It simply needs to be applied to all the sessions throughout the course.
2. Place a greater emphasis on how flexibility improves responsiveness to context. Presenters should include examples that demonstrate how flexibility benefits the design process, and in the exercises participants should be prompted to discuss how they would integrate flexibility in order to suit the context.
3. Place greater emphasis on how to find alternatives. Presenters, when describing case studies, should explain how the design teams identified alternatives, and conduct a brief comparison between the original or standard solution, and the alternative solution. Doing so can help participants better understand how flexibility is applied in design.
4. Place greater emphasis on the importance of the purpose and need statement for achieving right-size solutions. Throughout the workshop, presenters should emphasize the importance of the purpose and need statement for both CSS and PBPD, especially when it comes to right-sizing projects. Presenters should also emphasize the importance of developing performance targets that reflect the purpose and need.
5. Highlight the importance of outcomes and broader performance metrics. In the case studies and examples presented, the presenters should elaborate more on the results of design decisions and discuss the potential outcomes and benefits to users and the system itself, in addition to traditional metrics. Multimodal performance metrics were mentioned early in the workshop, during Mr. Bradley’s introduction, but they were not mentioned again throughout the rest of the workshop. Emphasizing the benefits of context-sensitive and flexible design will reinforce its value and importance in the minds of participants.