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Takeaways for More Equitable Engagement and Implementation of Interventions

Planners from these four cities were interviewed about the approaches taken to quickly create infrastructure that better supported the needs of pedestrians, cyclists, and local businesses during the height of the pandemic. In most cases, traditional community engagement methods were bypassed in an effort to act quickly on project implementation; this created issues with equity of the interventions for communities that are traditionally underserved.

Overall, the interviewees acknowledged the importance of community engagement but felt they did their best in the time-constrained situation they were in with pressure to act fast; takeaways and reflections from these initial projects and programs illuminate how critical it is to center social equity into decision-making for projects that prioritize active transportation.

• Bypassing traditional community engagement drew criticism and prompted more equitable strategies. None of the four cities did a standard community engagement process due to the desire to act quickly. However, some used existing plans; others relied on elected officials’ views as proxies for community engagement. This led to criticisms about how this affected historically underserved populations, particularly Black and indigenous communities and those populated by and people of color (BIPOC).
  

In Chapel Hill, no specific community engagement was conducted for the Franklin Street space reallocation since town staff felt as though a previous, similar engagement process for a permanent restriping of the road, the community petition, town council’s approval, and continuously checking in with business owners was sufficient. There were criticisms of the transformation in a local paper about a lack of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility due to some businesses using the sidewalk; however, town staff felt that they had considered these limitations and had to balance accessibility and local restaurant survival.

In D.C., the restaurants that were part of a BID or Main Street program, generally located in more affluent areas of the city, were at an advantage in this program. In addition, there was also a need for these restaurants’ surrounding physical environment to fit certain constraints, such as wider sidewalks. Anacostia, a historically Black neighborhood, has streets that were not redeveloped like the rest of the city’s streets due to a long history of disinvestment by the D.C. government, which made streateries more challenging to implement there. The city is now focused on strategies to expand the opportunities for streateries in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.

The city of Halifax did not conduct additional community engagement for the Slow Streets program, feeling that the prior engagement efforts were sufficient, and the temporary nature of the program would allow the city to adapt based on public reactions. However, members of the staff did know that they needed to speak with marginalized communities before implementing Slow Streets in their neighborhood. This conversation led to the implementation in one African-Nova Scotian neighborhood, where there was an existing relationship with the city and virtual engagement was successful. Conversely, this did not work in a different African-Nova Scotian neighborhood that lacked this existing relationship and efforts to build trust virtually failed. Later, the city collected feedback from the public and local organizations for a second rollout and adapted the program to better meet the needs of residents. An interim report from the program recommended making equitable distribution a main focus of future interventions, particularly areas that rely on nonvehicular modes of travel most. Now, the city is focusing on establishing relationships with Nova Scotian communities of color and is planning a Slow Streets program focused specifically on communities that rely on transit, biking, and walking.

In Oakland, the initial Slow Streets program faced intense pushback. After hearing the swift, negative reaction from residents, particularly from Black residents of East Oakland, the city engaged with community leaders and organizations to discuss their views. One interviewee reflected on how the residents were emotional and clearly felt hurt and betrayed over a lack of inclusion in the process, even though staff felt as though the engagement that they had conducted on the Bike Plan was sufficient. The interviewees felt as though the start of these talks was venting but eventually moved into a problem-solving space. They determined that the East Oakland community was made up of many essential workers, and that the idea of Slow Streets for exercise and recreation did not resonate. The community was more interested in traffic calming than recreation.

This led to the creation of Slow Streets: Essential Places to particularly serve the largely BIPOC East Oakland community.

Most cities tried to course-correct during implementation in response to concerns, including Oakland engaging with East Oakland to create Essential Places and bringing in a community artist. In addition, Chapel Hill staff realized the “quick win” town-owned streets that were eligible for temporary multiuse paths were in affluent, majority-white neighborhoods, which did not allow the state-owned roads with higher Black populations to benefit from the program. This prompted town staff to look for more creative, community-driven solutions in lower-resourced neighborhoods. 

• Setting a precedent for quick action. The interviewees thought that this experience showed the speed at which active transportation and infrastructure programs can be implemented, with some reductions in regulatory barriers. These interventions will provide a precedent for change. This is particularly true for more risk-averse stakeholders, such as traffic engineers and municipal attorneys. Faster implementation after more authentic community engagement, in which the public is able to react to something tangible on the street, could revolutionize the relationship between communities and local government and push active transportation forward to build healthier communities. Pilot testing, where people can experience the changes and suggest adjustments, may garner more authentic feedback and build trust with communities if the interventions are actually implemented in a reasonable time period. However, multiple cities found that temporary materials still need to be robust. Lightweight materials that are easily moved or damaged by the public often cause more negative reactions from the public, since they can quickly turn from infrastructure to trash, and thus reinforce perceptions of neglect and disinvestment by the city.

• Strategic communication is key. The projects in these four cities show that the methods by which planners receive feedback and communicate the goals of transportation projects must be well thought out. Community engagement is one way to inform and prepare the community for projects, but that was missed in most of these cases. This led to confusion among residents about the goals of programs. For example, East Oakland residents found the stay-at-home order in conflict with the message of Slow Streets. Most cities mentioned that to get the word out for these programs, they posted information on their websites, the mayors publicly announced the programs, and press releases were published. This is not enough to reach the general public. Interrogating and questioning who is providing feedback and how to measure success of the projects is also important. Solely relying on voluntary online surveys and community meetings is not reaching the people necessary to make decisions. Oakland found creative ways, such as short text surveys advertising where infrastructure is located and social media content, to evaluate programs. To understand who is giving feedback and how representative the feedback is, it is also important to track demographic data such as race, income level, ability, and neighborhood.

Washington, D.C., realized that its main method of communicating to restaurants about the Streateries program, through BIDs and Main Street organizations, was leaving out restaurants that were not in the wealthier neighborhoods with these organizations. Moving forward, program staff is committed to reaching out to businesses more equitably.

The lessons learned from the pandemic will undoubtedly change how active transportation planning is conducted in the future. It is clear that many municipalities are interested in faster, cheaper ways to adapt their streets to encourage active transportation and are reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic for lessons to do that. Transportation planning firms are developing expertise in the subject, so municipalities should think about partnering with experts on these adaptations to find a good fit for their own streets. In addition, local governments—particularly transportation planning departments—should collaborate with economic development professionals and local business owners to see how streets can be adapted to fit multiple goals. The question that lingers over this experience is how to implement an active transportation program quickly and equitably, avoiding a traditional, stale community-engagement process while at the same time not using a top-down approach. These case studies suggest that acting quickly in a way that facilitates in situ community engagement and adaptation could be one solution. This may be a “wicked problem,” but learning from cities’ responses to COVID-19 gives us a good place to start interrogating that problem.