2024 IAP2 USA Core Values Award Winners

Metro launched the agency’s largest comprehensive public engagement initiative called Better Bus Experience LIVE! in spring 2023 as part of Metro’s “Better Bus” initiative which includes a bus network redesign, transition to zero emission buses, new modern bus facilities, improved bus communications plus bus lanes and transit signal prioritization.

With Better Bus, Metro is taking a fresh look at improving bus service to create a network that is fast, frequent, reliable, equitable, and easier for customers to understand and navigate. The bus network redesign consists of the following four phases:

1. gathering and analyzing data, plus setting goals and priorities

2. developing a visionary network and gathering public feedback

3. drafting short-term and revised visionary networks

4. implementation.

During Phase 1 in fall 2022, Metro conducted extensive outreach activities that reached customers at their bus stops, in their communities, and in their homes to collect valuable insight regarding their experience, preference, and needs for bus service. With this information, Metro developed a draft Visionary Network and launched Phase 2 of the project in spring 2023. Metro expanded public by introducing the “Better Bus Experience LIVE!” concept and a special tagline – Visit, Discover, Share. The Metro team designed the bilingual Better Bus Experience LIVE! with customers in mind to involve and partner with a diverse region while addressing DEI needs. With nine weeks of engagement, Metro aimed to achieve the following:

• gather public feedback focusing on customers who are harder to reach
• increase awareness of the Bus Network Redesign
• effectively communicate with clear information as to why Metro is engaging and what feedback was collected
• build a bench of advocates.

Metro took to digital media, the airwaves and streets to promote. Bilingual street teams handed out over 235,000 take-ones, 1,500 posters, and 250 yard signs; digital communications reached more than 600,000 through paid and unpaid social media; and Metro launched a multi-lingual advertising campaign reaching more than 1.5 million.

The Better Bus Experience LIVE! brand extended into all public outreach including:

4 Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Workshops: highly interactive regional events in equity focus communities designed to provide customers an opportunity to experience an expert-guided tour of the draft future network and provide in-depth feedback in a celebratory atmosphere with bilingual trained staff.

Roadshow pop-ups: scaled-down versions of the Experience LIVE! workshops held at busy transit or community locations where visitors could explore the draft network at interactive stations and talk with bilingual and technical team members on site, providing feedback at a time and place convenient to them.

Bus ride-alongs: bilingual staff connected with riders while on their bus ride to collect feedback through one-on-one interactions providing information customized for their specific route.

Lunch & Learn webinars: online events provided guests, who may not have had easy access to in-person events, to participate in the process.

Metro also created the Better Bus Experience LAB!, a virtual Experience LIVE! brand extension, which allowed customers to explore the proposed routes with easy-to-use, online, interactive bilingual tools, while also allowing them to provide route-by-route feedback.

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This was the first public program based on participatory budgeting principles and models in Oregon. Metro is also unique. As the only elected regional government in the US, it maintains a special role as convener, supporting cross-jurisdictional collaboration. As a funder, it was imperative to have the full buy-in of partner jurisdictions, who would ultimately build, own, and maintain the funded capital projects. The program was also led by a committee of community members, who proposed innovative adaptations to the traditional participatory budgeting model. Instead of project development being conducted among a small group of individuals behind closed doors, the committee recommended additional community touchpoints. As a result, project development was conducted at public community design workshops where anyone could join in and help design park projects, with design and expertise support provided by jurisdictional staff and design professionals. The result was a more public, collaborative process and truly community-designed and developed project proposals.

The program was conducted by Oregon Metro, the elected regional government serving the greater Portland, Oregon, metropolitan region. State engagement objectives, purpose and scope We know that status quo processes reinforce status quo inequities. If we want all of our community members heard, we must adapt our processes to be more participatory, more responsive, and more equitable. We’ve maintained a mantra throughout this process: trust people. Community members are the experts of their own experiences, needs, and desires. All too often, those of us in positions of power substitute our judgement for our communities’, thinking we know best or that they lack the knowledge or expertise to know what they need. Yes, there are information gaps, but humility is requisite. If we want to know what our community members want and need, we just have to ask and listen to understand and address their underlying interests.

This program implemented a process centered on the highest levels of the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation. All process steps were undertaken in the Collaborate and Empower fields, with community members at the center of project proposal, development, and funding decisions. Jurisdictional partners supported community members to ensure that projects were feasible and compatible with the program goals of racial equity and climate resilience as well as the funding source, which required capital projects, but the outcome of the community vote determined which projects would be recommended for funding.

Three key outcomes showing impact of public participation and engagement:

1) 15 capital projects funded with $2.3 million from 118 ideas submitted,

2) hundreds of participants over 20 public events, and

3) over 2000 community votes.

Three key engagement takeaways:

1) Advancing equity requires new processes that center different voices, and new relationships with community. It also presents the long-overdue opportunity to repair past harms from public investment and improve institutional trust.

2) We heard new voices. Folks came up to us after participating in a workshop and told us that this was the first time they’ve been able to participate in public process outside election day. By providing opportunities for participation in community spaces, to go where community already is, to make it easy to contribute, opened this program up to a host of new voices.

3) It allowed us to fund new and improved parks and natural spaces that reflect the needs and desires of the community. Many of these projects are exciting new ideas that many of our partners have said have always been just over the horizon; new ideas, many reflecting indigenous knowledge and practice, that have just never made it past the idea phase into investment plans, and now they’ll be built!

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