Achieving Public Involvement During a Pandemic:

Eastern Will County Truck Route Feasibility Study

Challenge:

In the face of the pandemic, Morreale was challenged to create meaningful and effective public involvement opportunities to drive quality feedback on alternatives for improving mobility and safety for citizens and freight carriers in eastern Will County. The goal of the public involvement process was to ensure early and frequent stakeholder engagement and build interagency relationships that would help link planning and engineering while minimizing environmental impacts. 

Solution:

As the communications lead, the Morreale team created a Stakeholder Involvement Plan (SIP) that served as the framework for shifting all public involvement activities online.

The project team made it a priority to ensure that Limited English Proficient (LEP) and low-income populations in the study area were given the opportunity to learn about the study and provide feedback. This was achieved by sending a postcard in both English and Spanish to over 5,500 people to encourage them to scan a QR code to take the survey and learn more about the study.

Highlights

• Activities included the development of a bilingual interactive website that served as the central location for all project information and activities.

• A month-long online public engagement period took place instead of a traditional in-person meeting and included a survey, newsletters, a paid social media campaign, and an interactive map that allowed users to leave comments directly on the map of the study area.

Result:

The first month long online public engagement period was considered a success. The far-reaching paid social media campaign reached 6,095 people, made 9,202 impressions, and resulted in 471 post engagements. This combined with the and overall digital outreach strategy resulted in 252 completed surveys, which was quadruple the response that was expected. 

The survey responses will be used to develop the study's purpose and need statement, which is the first major step in the PEL process..