Crowdsourcing and Virtual Town Halls: New ways to engage
By Kara Vuicich, with Phil Olmstead, Elizabeth Romero, and Valerie Taylor April 2012 – Public participation is vital and necessary to planning and decision-making. It helps planners, decision makers, and the public process their concerns and engage in effective and meaningful discourse. However, legally mandated hearings and council and commission meetings provide few opportunities for …
Urban Street Design Guide
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) saw a need to shift the conversation from a bias toward highway designs that simply don’t meet the complex needs of cities toward building more sustainable streets. NelsonNygaard collaborated with NACTO staff to develop national street design guidelines relevant to cities. The Urban Street Design Guide is …
Transit Master Plan
Seattle has ambitious growth plans, and despite traffic congestion throughout the city, there are no plans or opportunities to add motor vehicle capacity. To help Seattleites understand its future mobility needs, Nelson\Nygaard led an intensive stakeholder process that examined a broad array of corridors and used a multiple account evaluation approach to prioritize those that …
The RIDE Paratransit Service
The ADA paratransit service of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), The RIDE provides nearly two million door-to-door trips each year in the greater Boston area. The MBTA hoped to control costs while meeting the MBTA’s minimum obligations under the ADA and locally established service quality standards. Nelson\Nygaard identified a set of cost-reducing strategies that could …