Transportation Planning Capacity Building Program

- Peer Program Evaluation Report -

Fiscal Years 2001-2003
November 2004

This report presents an initial evaluation of the Peer Program, a key technical assistance component of the Transportation Planning Capacity Building (TPCB) Program. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), who jointly manage the Peer Program with assistance from the USDOT Volpe Center, conducted this evaluation.

The objective of this report is to document Peer Program activities over its first three years of operation, as well as to evaluate overall customer satisfaction. This report details the events undertaken from the Program‘s inception in May 2001 through the close of FY2003; presents a qualitative assessment of their value to participants; and discusses the effect of participant feedback on the Peer Program as it has continued to evolve.

Background

The Peer Program brings transportation planning professionals together to share perspectives on effective practice, common challenges, and problem-solving techniques. The Program enables practitioners to share knowledge and experience in a range of settings, including small group meetings, workshops, informal roundtables, and stakeholder conferences. The Peer Program is an important component of the overall TPCB Program, which utilizes a variety of means to provide technical assistance materials to promote effective transportation planning.

The Peer Program was initiated in May 2001. At that time, the Peer Program was a component of the larger Metropolitan Capacity Building (MCB) Program, with the mission of providing support to metropolitan transportation planning entities and professionals. In 2003, the program‘s scope was enlarged to serve all levels of governmental transportation planning, and the Program‘s name was changed to the Transportation Planning Capacity Building Program.

To request technical assistance through the TPCB Peer Program, a representative of State or local government, a transit operator, a metropolitan planning organization (MPO), a Regional Planning Organization, or a tribal government may approach the appropriate FHWA Division Office and/or FTA Regional Office. Both the Division Office and Regional Office will confer on the request, and must concur that the Peer Program can provide technical assistance on the issue of concern. The appropriate Federal field office then submits a formal request to the Peer Program on behalf of the applicant, and works with the applicant to develop the format and details of the peer event. Under most circumstances, the applicant hosts the event. Funding for participant travel and documentation of the event is available from the TPCB Program.

SUMMARY OF PAST PEER PROGRAM EVENTS

From its inception in May 2001 through FY2003, the Peer Program received 26 requests for technical assistance. This report describes the 21 events that were sponsored during the evaluation period (the remaining 5 were scheduled in FY2004).

Topics

The topics and host locations of these events are listed below according to the major planning themes addressed.

Funding Issues

• Financial Management
  • Best Practices of Planning Partnerships (Denver, CO)
  • Cooperative Revenue Forecasting and Annual Listings of Projects (Vail, CO)
  • Financial Planning and Programming (Denver, CO)

Communities

• Community Design
  • Context-Sensitive Design/Solutions (New York, NY)
• Community Impact Assessment
  • Community Impact Assessment Roundtable (Indianapolis, IN)
• Health & Human Services
  • Partnerships Between Public Transit and MPOs in Job Access and Health and Human Services Transportation (Austin, TX)
• Public Involvement
  • Public Involvement Workshop, Transplex 2003 (Orlando, Florida)
  • Public Involvement, Land Use, and Regional Council Leadership, NARC Annual Meeting (Pittsburgh, PA)
  • Techniques for Public Involvement (Orlando, FL)

Operations

• Freight in Planning
  • Freight and the Planning Process (Philadelphia, PA)
• General
  • Management and Operations (Washington, DC)

Planning Process

• Land Use & Transportation
  • Land Use Models in Transportation Planning (Tucson, AZ)
• Statewide Planning
  • Michigan DOT/Texas DOT Peer Exchange (Dallas, TX)
• Metropolitan Planning
  • Border Crossings and Bi-National Transportation Planning and Coordination (El Paso, TX)
  • HPMS Workshop: Building Partnerships with Metropolitan Planning Organizations (Hershey, PA)
  • Multi-State Transportation Planning Peer Exchange (Ames, IA)
  • Noteworthy Practices of Capital District Transportation Committee (Albany, NY)
• Rural &Small Community Planning
  • Institutions, Processes, and Practices for Transportation Planning in Rural Areas (Indianapolis, IN)
  • Rural Public Transportation‘s Role in the Planning Process, CTAA Expo 2003 (Philadelphia, PA)
  • Solutions to Rural Issues Through Partnerships: A Community-Centered Approach Transportation Solutions for Rural Communities (Hagerstown, MD)
• Planning & Programming
  • Enhancing Transit‘s Role in Transportation Decision Making (Baltimore, MD)

Geographic Range of Participation in Peer Programs, FY2001-2003

Peer Program exchanges, roundtables, and workshops were primarily hosted in the eastern part of the United States. In the first two years of the Program, the majority of events were hosted in urban areas, and largely focused on urban transportation planning topics, because of the Program‘s focus on metropolitan planning for most of that time. As the TPCB Program expanded to serve the needs of transportation professionals in State, rural, and tribal areas, the range of Peer Program topics of interest broadened. The TPCB Peer Program website provides specific dates and lists of participants for the various events. Throughout this period, the Program invited peer participants from all over the country, including Alaska and Hawaii, to provide technical assistance at Peer events. The map below shows the host cities as well as the states that have been represented in Peer Program activities.

Figure 1: Host cities of Peer Programs between Fiscal Years 2001 and 2003

Distribution of Transportation Agency Participation

The largest proportion of agencies taking advantage of the Peer Program between FY2001-2003 were MPOs and Councils of Governments (COGs). State DOTs and other agencies increased their participation in FY2002 and continued to do so in FY2003 after the expansion of the customer base served by the TPCB Program.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK ON THE PEER EXPERIENCE

In order to determine customer satisfaction with Peer Program events during FY2001-2003, FHWA and FTA Peer Program staff reviewed written evaluations and conducted follow-up telephone interviews. Event-specific comments emphasized that the best use of the Peer Program is for addressing a specific problem or process, which can either be benchmarked against what peers are doing, or benefit from a recognized "best practice" from the field. While participants were satisfied with the variety of activities at a given Peer Program, some requested reciprocal site visits or scans to better understand the context of the peers‘ successful practices, and observe their implementation.

Feedback from the participants was organized into the following categories: General Feedback, Program Participation, Marketing Strategies, and Program Recommendations.

Program Participation

Having an effective, relevant group of peers at a Peer event greatly contributes to how much information can be gained from the meeting. The Peer Program can assist applicants with choosing specific peers for their event. Feedback and recommendations on the participation component of the Program include:

• Creating a database of "notable practices" or "lessons learned" that could be used by applicants to choose peers; the information would also be valuable to other agencies that had not participated in a particular event.
• Increasing the geographic diversity of attendees and the variety of agencies to be represented at events, such as DOTs, MPOs, and others.
• Continuing the attendance of and strong participation by FHWA and FTA staff, because their comments lead to an improved understanding of Federal requirements, funding, and roles in the planning process.

Marketing Strategies

Participants offered feedback on how to better market the Program as a tool to others, and how to encourage agencies to apply to host an event:

• Marketing directly to local agencies, such as MPOs and Native American tribes.
• Marketing of the Program on the MPO Certification agenda.
• Publicizing the Program more through the FHWA Division and FTA Regional offices.
• Utilizing marketing strategies such as a tagline, and giving out items such as magnets, with contact information about the Program.

Program Recommendations

Feedback from the evaluations and interviews included many recommendations for future planning of Peer events. This information will help the FHWA Division and FTA Regional staff, FHWA/FTA Headquarters, and the USDOT Volpe Center, who all play a key role in organizing the event logistics. Feedback from the participants included the following:

• Preparing binders of information for participants or make the program agenda available prior to events
• Preparing participants in advance of events, through conference calls or other forms of information sharing, to ensure that all participants are prepared to share relevant and useful information with their peers.
• Providing a checklist so that presenters will know what is expected of them and that all presentations will be at an appropriate level of detail or breadth, depending upon the specific topics discussed.
• Making presentations available via email, either prior to or after the event.
• Scheduling future follow-up discussions at the time of the event, so that an ongoing discussion is ensured.
• Sharing "lessons learned" with USDOT staff in a TPCB newsletter or other format.

Since the initiation of the Program in 2001, a number of procedures addressing the above recommendations have already been adopted. The Program will continue to consider the implementation of participant recommendations in an ongoing effort to improve the overall Program.

RESULTS/OUTCOMES OF PEER PROGRAMS

The success of the Peer Program can ultimately be judged on the number of new practices or processes adopted by the applicants as result of their requested event. Based on the responses received from the evaluation forms, participants plan to initiate a variety of activities as a result of their participation, including:

• Representatives of one MPO planned to conduct scanning tours for members of their planning community to provide a better understanding of transportation planning to a broader audience.
• Another participant planned to investigate how many transit operators in his region were "at the table" in the metropolitan planning process.
• Participants in the peer exchange on Border Crossings and Bi-National Transportation Planning and Coordination intend to establish an employee exchange program with sister agencies in Mexico.
• Participants in other exchanges planned to implement training sessions for other staff in their agency and community, to share the knowledge they gathered at the peer event.

Follow-up interviews indicated that various innovative activities, ranging from exchange of materials and manuals to development of new procedures, have resulted from Program events. The information gained from Peer experiences have been shared at MPO meetings, state DOT meetings, and State planning conferences. The efforts that resulted are as follows:

• Freight and the Planning Process: The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission prepared a PowerPoint presentation highlighting information gathered at this Peer Exchange and shared it with a variety of interest groups in their region. The MPO has also been meeting bi-weekly with their local Chamber of Commerce to discuss freight issues, and they will be partnering on a freight study.
• Land Use Models in Transportation Planning: Participants formed a working group to continue discussion on the topic.
• Community Impact Assessment (CIA) Roundtable: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation released a policy statement on CIA.
• Context-Sensitive Design/Solutions: This event led to a proposal to the State of New York for a program to certify cities in context-sensitive design, in order to make the project approval process more efficient.
• Noteworthy Practices of Capital District Transportation Committee (CDTC) Other MPOs have improved their public involvement and outreach techniques based on information received from an exchange on public involvement.

NEXT STEPS

FHWA and FTA staff initiated evaluation of the TPCB Peer Program to gather feedback from customers and determine future needs. The Peer Program is highly valued by a range of transportation planning professionals. Participants and USDOT staff would like to see the Program grow and sponsor a greater number of events in the future. The TPCB Program will use the results of this evaluation to expand the services, improve efficiency and efficacy, and improve the quality of service extended to the FHWA Division and FTA Regional offices and their customers.

During FY2004, 13 Peer Program events were held throughout the country. New Peer Exchange topics introduced in FY2004 include: Air Quality, Linking Planning and NEPA, Performance Measures, and Tribal Planning. Over 450 participants were active in the Peer Program during FY2004 events. The Peer Program is expected to continue to grow in FY2005. Reports highlighting the Peer Program events, along including host and participant contact information, are found on the TPCB Peer Programs website.