Building Support for New Transportation Funding and Financing Program

The transportation community is well aware of the universal problem of (a) infrastructure investment needs, associated funding requirements, and the need for more flexible financing approaches and (b) public uncertainty over the efficacy of investing in transportation as opposed to other uses of their money. These are long-standing issues regardless of economic cycles, and they relate to the state of infrastructure needs and shifting economic and demographic patterns as well as public desires for public processes that are fair, equitable, efficient, and transparent. Recognizing these challenges, the Kansas Department of Transportation (DOT) embarked on a multiyear experiment to reinvent transportation planning and project selection processes in an effort to achieve greater support through stakeholder consultation, collaboration, and adoption of improved and expanded methods for ranking and selecting projects that appeal to broader issues of public concern (such as job creation) instead of merely engineering measures of need. Seven years of experimentation in consultation, collaboration, and revising processes provides many lessons for the transportation community that may be applicable in whole or in part for other state or regional transportation agencies. This paper critically examines the methods and tools used by the Kansas DOT, including surveys, road rallies, collaborative planning efforts, social media outreach, economic impact analysis, and expanded project selection processes. Taken together, this work has produced a positive outcome, including the recent funding by the Kansas legislature of a new 10-year transportation improvement program.