This section provides an overview of CSS. What it is and how it can help to shape transportation projects around the country. Feel free to browse through the topics below or search for a particular page by entering a keyword in the search box below or clicking on "Advanced Search."
In CSS projects, a variety management tools are needed to build a truly collaborative team of internal agency staff, consultants, and external stakeholders, establish trust and accountability, and keep a project on track and on schedule.
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Placemaking "Placemaking strives to balance all the users of a street - pedestrians, transit riders, motorists, and bicyclists, rather than on just designing roads to accommodate motor vehicles. The focus is on how these streets and roads connect to the surrounding districts and public spaces and make these areas more economically stable, safe, and productive. The input of those who use and experience a place on a regular basis is essential to the Place-making process." more...
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How Transportation and Community Partnerships are Shaping America: Part I: Transit Stops and Stations
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Developing a Team Operating Agreement "Developing a Team of Operating Agreement allows you to express your expectations for each other, your operating parameters, and the way in which you will define success at the end of the project, keeps you on track as a group and promotes accountability with each other and the stakeholders."
"Regular meetings are vitally important in establishing a framework for a strong project team. It you've done these meetings right, you truly will have set the stage for your team's success on the project and will help prevent design "re-dos" down the road which can be costly." more...
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Building Projects that Build Communities: Recommended Best Practices
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Organizing to Carry out the Work A project is best carried out with organized steps including; creating a task force and a technical staff, determining how to reach decisions, keeping a schedule, clear communication, and ultimately, to understand needs without predetermining the budget.
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When Main Street is a State Highway
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Developing Public Involvement Plans "Certain Mn/DOT personnel are responsible for overseeing public involvement programs for specific projects, and for various types of transportation plans. For these people, developing public involvement plans is a critical task. The level of detail of the plan will depend on the magnitude and potential impacts of the project or plan. The following steps, excerpted from the National Transit Institute manual "Public Involvement in Transportation Decision Making," describe this process." more...
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Hear Every Voice: A Guide to Public Involvement at Mn/DOT
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Hear Every Voice: A Guide to Public Involvement at Mn/DOT
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Public Involvement Guidelines Summary The following public involvement guidelines were developed to assist Mn/DOT personnel in implementing public involvement plans and activities. They reflect the mandates of ISTEA, reinforced by TEA-21, as well as public agency best practices. more...
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Hear Every Voice: A Guide to Public Involvement at Mn/DOT
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Hear Every Voice: A Guide to Public Involvement at Mn/DOT
Public Involvement Techniques: Systematic Development of Informed Consent
"Systematic Development of Informed Consent(SDIC) seeks to 1) establish the public agency's legitimate role by casting its program as one aimed at problemsolving and, 2) to communicate to the public the serious nature of the problem the agency is attempting to address ... The premise of the SDIC process is that accomplishing these two objectives, in combination with a thorough public involvement process, will allow an agency to achieve informed consent..."
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Building Projects that Build Communities: Recommended Best Practices
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Question Three: What can we learn from the past? "What has gone well between the partnering agencies, and what hasn't worked so well? What successes do you hope to replicate, and what failures do you want to avoid?"
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Building Projects that Build Communities: Recommended Best Practices
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Environmental Justice and Transportation: Building Model Partnerships Community Workshop Proceedings
The Environmental Justice and Transportation workshops addressed a wide range of issues, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the FHWA NEPA, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, environmental justice guidance, equity analysis, performance measures, regional transportation planning and decision making, air quality and public health, transportation investments, public transit, and public involvement.
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Federal Highway Administration
Article / Paper / Report
Transportation and Environmental Justice
"FHWA and FTA have embraced the principles of environmental justice as a means toward improving the transportation decision-making process. Today, effective transportation decision making requires understanding and addressing the unique needs of many different socioeconomic groups ... The case studies included in this booklet are part of FHWA's and FTA's on-going effort to put environmental justice at the center of transportation decision making."
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Federal Highway Administration
Federal Transit Administration
