The city of Sacramento, CA was going into a planning period for how to spend transportation budget to improve how citizens got around the city. Sacramento spans more than 100 square miles and is made up of more than:
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- 1,800 miles of streets
- 250 miles of bike lanes
- 78 miles of shared use paths
- 43,000 streetlights
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Not wanting to make decisions in a vacuum, the city looked to crowdsource input from citizens to inform their investments.
Crowdsourcing Portal
Engineering firm Fehr & Peers worked with the city to prioritize and develop plans. They turned to trusted partner, Blue Raster, to develop a portal that could capture all of the needed input in a user-friendly way. The team developed a one page interface that asked citizen to rank potential projects in terms of their importance. The mobile-first design ensured people would be able to access the site on their preferred device.
The site sets up the question like a game – If you had $42 million/year to invest in transportation, where would you spend it? Survey participants are presented with six categories of improvements:
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- Air Quality and Health
- Connections to Places
- Equity
- Maintenance
- Safety
- Technology
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Citizens then drag a slider next to each category to show what percentage of money they would allot to each area. As they make their choices, the page shows how much money they have left to spend and summarizes the outcomes their choices prioritize.
Transportation officials can view the collected input in dashboards for a quick view of the community’s priorities. They can sort responses based on various demographics or other criteria to help inform specific investments. Plans based on this input will be developed and presented to the community.
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