Latest MTI perspective reveals public transportation agencies struggle engaging stakeholders

The latest Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) perspective reveals public transportation agencies struggle engaging stakeholders. The perspective, Not Just Checking a Box: What Does Effective Stakeholder Engagement in Public Transit Look Like?, highlights strategies for stakeholder engagement that have proven more genuine and effective in achieving critical goals and milestones for transit agencies.

The perspective argues that:

• Traditional transit outreach, which consists of an agency deciding on a project and then going out and trying to sell it, creates conflict.
• Internally, the standard has been deemed the “Decide – Announce – Defend (DAD)” model—the transit agency decides and develops a project and then presents it to the community for their reaction.
• The DAD model presumes the problem is already well defined and then presents a solution. Without agreement on the problem, agreement on the solution is unlikely. Thus, this approach often results in concessions that lead to worse outcomes.
• The industry is beginning to adopt new practices that result in a better product and user experience. The new practices, many of which are adopted from the spheres of social justice and public health, are more conducive to building trust within the community, which benefits everyone. They include building relationships with the community consistently, working collaboratively with communities and moving forward when necessary.

Authors of the perspective include Joshua Schank, a research associate at MTI, a managing principal at InfraStrategies and a senior fellow in the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as Emma Huang, a senior consultant with InfraStrategies LLC and previous manager in the Office of Extraordinary Innovation at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where she focused on transit research and policy.

“Another area of stakeholder engagement that has received less attention but still needs to move beyond a narrow project-centered relationship is how the public sector interacts with the private sector,” write the authors. “Public agencies, focused on responsibly handling taxpayer funds, sometimes view the private sector as solely profit-driven, leading to stringent procurement processes. These well-intentioned policies can stifle communication and leave the private sector skeptical of public agencies' ability to adhere to realistic timelines. This diminished collaboration hinders innovation and limits the public sector's exposure to new ideas.”

The perspective notes stakeholder engagement for public transit projects should be genuine, transparent and people-oriented to be effective and that the transit industry would benefit from viewing stakeholder input as a method to help shape and improve initiatives rather than a way to gauge reaction to the project.  

According to the perspective, once stakeholder input has helped formulate a project, even if there continues to be a minority of opposition, transit agency leaders need to continue to move forward to complete projects that benefit the industry and the community. 

The full perspective can be downloaded from MTI's website.