What Happened?
Seattle created a Transit Advisory Board to provide the City Council with feedback and recommendations on how to spend $45 million on improved transportation services in the community.
Goal
The Seattle City Council created a Transit Advisory Board to act as a citizens oversight committee for the city’s Department of Transportation. The advisory board will oversee the spending of $45 million in city funds that have been dedicated to transportation projects and improvements. The main purpose of the funding will be to expand existing bus transit services provided by King County Metro.
“The Transit Advisory Board will monitor the department to ensure the goals of frequency, reliability and reducing overcrowding have been met,” City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen told Gov1. “The project will start in June and be fully implemented in September, with hopes to see the goals substantially fulfilled by the end of 2015.”
Both the city and Transit Advisory Board will use King County Metro’s annual service guideline reports as a baseline to determine which routes are inefficient – overcrowded, underused, unreliable, behind schedule. From there, the department will strategically improve and expand bus routes throughout the city. The baseline will be used to measure project performance.
The Need
According to Rasmussen, citizen oversight committees provide local governments with a valuable reality check. The organization of community of representatives is tasked with monitoring local government decision making and performance to make sure the city meets its commitments made during a campaign.
“I think oversight committees provide the public with a measure of assurance that voters are not just writing a blank check to the city or a department,” Rasmussen told Gov1. “The committee holds departments accountable to voters by asking the right questions. Is the department communicating effectively? Is it addressing community questions and concerns?”
Seattle created the Transit Advisory Board with the goal of gathering an array of perspectives from diverse members of the community. Board members should be representative of different:
- Geographic areas of the city
- Transit rider groups
- Users of different modes of public transportation
- Residents interested in improving transit conditions
- Schools, businesses and neighborhood organizations that utilize public transit resources
Each member of the board will come with unique experiences and input on how best to improve transit services to meet specific needs. The advisory board will hold regular public meetings where citizens can provide feedback and get updates on the latest transit project news.
Going Public
Many other municipalities are seeking public input before launching new public transportation plans. Understanding the value of the citizen perspective when identify inefficiencies and disparities in public transit networks, local governments are hosting public forums to introduce new ideas and collect feedback from those most impacted by transit projects: the local riders.
Hillsborough County, Florida, for example, has launched Go Hillsborough which is composed of four phases during which the county transit department works with the public to determine how best to address transportation issues. The first phase involved local officials hosting dozens of meetings with members of the community to understand the transportation challenges facing local residents, Tampa Bay Times reported.
The second phase involves community representatives prioritizing all projects and improvements laid out in phase one. The second phase is designed to align the goals of the transit department with the needs of citizens. The third phase will involve calculating the cost of each project and finding funding, while the final phase will be the formal proposal to voters, Tampa Bay Times reported.
Related Stories
4 Strategies to Mitigate Traffic Congestion