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About this Project
The Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) 2 Capacity area is working toward designing a transportation planning and project development decision-making framework that better integrates transportation decisions with social, economic, and environmental considerations. In the context of transportation planning, the practice of visioning has been employed by some agencies to enable decisions which are more integrated with related issues, more coordinated with partner agencies, and more closely connected to the values of a community. Visioning holds great potential to facilitate collaborative decision-making processes, and the SHRP 2 program has developed practical guidance for practitioners on the role of visioning and links to transportation planning.
The cornerstone of current SHRP 2 research is the web-based product, Transportation for Communities - Advancing Projects through Partnerships (TCAPP). Information and research reports about this research program and other SHRP 2 projects are available here. This effort produced an interactive Decision Guide to better guide practitioners through balanced, inclusive, and collaborative decision-making processes within the four initial phases of transportation planning: long range transportation planning, corridor planning, programming, and environmental review and permitting.
The objective of this project, A Community Visioning Approach to Support the SHRP 2 Collaborative Decision-Making Framework for Transportation Investments, is to develop a supporting framework for visioning which enables broad, strategic outcomes of visioning to readily transfer to specific, focused planning and project processes included in the Decision Guide. This research is intended to advance the state of the practice of visioning in support of transportation planning.
To that end, this web resource presents a model vision process, or Vision Guide, which is a blueprint for the preparation, creation, and implementation of a visioning process. This structured, simplified process will better enable practitioners to engage in visioning in support of transportation planning. The Vision Guide is the foundation of this effort and serves as the organizing framework for the research presented in the Technical Report.
The Vision Guide developed under this project exists outside of the TCAPP Decision Guide framework, and can be used independently. However, through TCAPP’s interactive web site and the application “Visioning and Transportation”, the integration of these two processes provides an invaluable tool to practitioners. It may also encourage those interested in visioning to adapt the TCAPP model for use in other transportation processes, as well as illustrating the value of visioning to transportation practitioners pursuing a collaborative decision-making model. The resources developed through SHRP 2 Capacity Research will serve a critical role as transportation agencies, regional planning councils, civic groups and others are increasingly tasked with coordinating around and planning within the complex interlay of social, economic and environmental issues.
The Transportation – Visioning for Communities web resource was developed by Cambridge Systematics, Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in association with Louis Berger, Inc.; the University of North Carolina; AECOM; and Planning Communities, Inc.
Disclaimer
This software is offered as is, without warranty or promise of support of any kind either expressed or implied. Under no circumstances will the National Academy of Sciences or the Transportation Research Board (collectively "TRB") be liable for any loss or damage caused by the installation or operation of this product. TRB makes no representation or warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, in fact or in law, including without limitation, the warranty of merchantability or the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and shall not in any case be liable for any consequential or special damages.