https://movementstrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Spectrum-of-Community-Engagement-to-Ownership.pdf 

Active Transportation Design Guide: https://wsdot.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/WSDOT-Active-Transportation-Programs-Design-Guide_0.pdf

Quick Build Toolkits

Art in the right of way toolkit

Complete Streets

WSDOT Complete Streets Page 

Level of Traffic Stress

Complete Streets Flyer 

Community Benefits for Public Projects

Community benefits refer to a range of ways that a public project can support, stabilize, and enhance the community where it is located. In addition to the direct benefits of active transportation projects, such as improved safety, mobility, and accessibility, a community benefits approach aims to ensure that projects bring other resources, opportunities, and enhancements that serve the needs of residents. While not required, the following outline provides examples of ways to incorporate community benefits into different stages of the project.

Benefit Type

Example

Housing: Identify planned low-income affordable housing adjacent to the project site and coordinate to improve accessibility and mobility as part of the transportation project scope

Environment and Open Space: Include landscaping that utilizes native plants and trees in designs to create green streets, increase tree canopy and shade, support pollinators, and increase access to nature

Health: Leverage new opportunities for recreation and active transportation through programming and outreach that makes diverse audiences feel welcome using new trails and other infrastructure

Social Cohesion: Ensure projects address community concerns about safe and easy access to grocery stores, community centers, schools, and other vital community spaces. Incorporate amenities like water, seating, shade, and lighting that make the public realm more comfortable and accessible to people of all ages and abilities

Job Creation: Inform the community of new project-related jobs and provide support to prepare and connect them to jobs planning, building, and maintaining new infrastructure

Local Businesses and Nonprofits: Inform local contractors, vendors, businesses, and organizations of contract opportunities at every stage of the project, and include local preference in selection criteria

Climate Resilience: Include green infrastructure to manage stormwater, street trees to reduce urban heat islands, and manage localized impacts of extreme weather

 Planning Phase

Community Benefits Strategies during the Planning Phase

Partner with Community Based Organizations (CBOs). Work with community groups or CBOs. These organizations are already rooted in the community and well-versed in the community’s concerns and interests. Through partnership with them, where CBOs can serve as an expert voice or project leader, projects can more successfully address needs identified by the community and mitigate harms the community is concerned about. For culturally or language-specific communities, CBOs can be trusted liaisons who increase community comfort in participating in a public process.

Involve young people in the planning process. Work with schools, youth organizations and Safe Routes to Schools programs to identify opportunities to involve youth in the project planning process and increase awareness of careers in planning and engineering. This may include class projects, games, focus groups, walk audits, and collaborative social media campaigns featuring clear, approachable language.

Utilize local businesses and vendors. Where possible, prioritize hiring of qualified consultants (such as planners, engineers, and public engagement specialists) whose base of operations or staff are local or adjacent to the project area. While most opportunities existing during the planning phase, all project phases involve other services that can be procured locally, such as renting event space for public meetings, printing materials, purchasing food for events, or hiring translators and interpreters.

Collaborate with the disabled community. Work in partnership to understand and amplify the voices and needs of those who are dependent upon sidewalks and transit. Bringing these voices into the planning process can ensure that projects meet the needs of all users. Working with Organizations Such as Disability Rights Washington or a local organization can better support equitable outcomes.

Include community resilience and emergency response. Integrate active transportation planning with planning for community resilience and emergency response:

·   Center vulnerable communities in decision-making and planning for climate resilience,

·   Consider multimodal access to climate resiliency hubs,

·   Consider how active transportation facilities can be designed to support emergency response and recovery, and

·   Consider evacuation routes for people without access to private vehicles.

Boost upward mobility. Boosting Upward Mobility: A Planning Guide for Local Action provides a guide to boost upward mobility and advance equity in local communities through building a cross-sector team, gathering and analyzing data, conducting community and organization engagement, and identifying needed systems changes.5 It includes a framework for guidance and mobility metrics that offer insight about mobility in communities at a city and county scale.

Conduct a Community Impact Assessment. The community impact assessment process alerts affected communities and residents, as well as transportation planners and decision makers, to the likely consequences of a transportation action. The assessment provides critical information about community values for the formulation of project objectives and the development of alternatives. This activity should start at the beginning of a study process, with community goals and concerns serving as major input to a project’s statement of purpose and need. This process will likely yield community input on non-transportation needs and priorities, which may point to opportunities for leveraging the public process to provide greater benefits (for example, supporting access to food and outdoor space by planning to repurpose construction staging areas as a community garden following project completion).

Reduce displacement by supporting tenants' rights and more affordable and low-income housing. Large projects with elements such as bus rapid transit or regional trails have the potential to raise property values, creating a higher risk of residential, commercial, and community displacement. Coordinate with the local jurisdiction about planned developments to:

• Reduce parking, minimum lot size, and setback requirements (reduces land requirements per housing unit and separates vehicle ownership cost from housing cost),

•  Reduce development impact fees and taxes for compact, infill development, reflecting lower public service costs, and/or

•  Upzone to allow higher densities and support compact housing types.

• Pass local tenants' ordinances and create a Renters Commission to increase local knowledge of renter policies.

•   Developing a Community Land Trust can be a great way to support long-term affordability and community-based home ownership

Design Phase

Community Benefits Strategies During Design Phase

Incorporate universal design. Provide accessibility for all users through universal design. This includes accessible curb ramps, tactile and audible cues, and pedestrian signal cycles of an adequate length to accommodate users with differing levels of personal mobility. Provide benches and other seating at regular intervals to enable people to rest. Consider what lighting and paving surfaces that will best support people with low or no eyesight and mobility device users.

Incorporate green infrastructure. Use features like bioswales and rain gardens to manage stormwater and runoff, attenuate flooding and storm surges, and improve water quality by filtering pollutants.

Incorporate climate-adapted and native plants in green treatments. As extreme weather becomes more frequent, many public agencies are finding they need to update their planting palette for changing conditions. Selecting trees and plants adapted to tolerate temperature and precipitation extremes will bring longevity to green infrastructure. Native species have the additional benefit of supporting birds and pollinators, bringing beauty and species diversity to the project area and supporting local food production. Local nurseries, Conservation Districts and the Washington Native Plant Society  can be valuable partners in selecting and supplying plants for a project.

Highlight local history and culture. Collaborate with advocacy groups and residents to include amenities, design features, artwork, or interpretive signage that showcases local history and culture, with an emphasis on the stories of communities whose stories have not been fully represented in past projects.

Manage heat. Heat islands are areas where infrastructure such as buildings, roads, and trails absorb and reemit the sun’s heat, creating pockets of higher temperatures relative to outlying areas. Heat islands have been found to be inequitably dispersed throughout cities, with higher temperatures occurring more frequently in neighborhoods with lower average incomes and with higher populations of people of color than in adjacent neighborhoods in the same city. Heat contributes to excess death and heat related illness. Consider shade trees and paving materials that mitigate urban heat island effects. Where possible, provide drinking water access.

Construction Phase

Community Benefits Strategies During Construction Phase

Streamline project development and implementation. Find ways to ease implementation for smaller active transportation projects with minimal anticipated impacts on adjacent development and land uses.

Hire local firms and workers. As a project approaches construction, inform the local business community of upcoming opportunities through pre-RFP conferences, open houses, or presentations at local chambers of commerce and culturally based business organizations. Provide opportunities for larger firms to connect with smaller ones, and ensure potential proposers are aware of any local hiring preference or MWBE contracting requirements well in advance of RFPs. Look for ways to support apprenticeship during project construction to provide access to jobs for local workers.

Create a construction mitigation plan. Include financial support for excessive impacts on local businesses due to construction.

 Operations and Maintenance Phase

Community Benefits Strategies During the Operations and Maintenance Phase

Educate the public, including a focus on young people. Include educational signage and other resources that illustrate how to use new types of infrastructure (e.g. bicycle two-stage turn queue boxes) and explain their benefits. Consider using project implementation as an opportunity to teach students about transportation and infrastructure.

Position communities for job opportunities. Inform the community of programming and maintenance job opportunities and provide support to connect and prepare them for these jobs.