Traffic Presentations at Public Hearings

Traffic is often a scapegoat used by neighbors at public hearings (in front of county boards, city councils, planning commissions, etc.) to try to kill a proposed development project.  It is a favorite tactic used by those opposed to new Walmart stores (at least the dozen or so public hearings I have attended for my Walmart traffic studies). 

I attended an emotional public hearing with a developer for his proposed strip mall/gas station development a few weeks ago where traffic issues were raised.  Through a lot of practice, I have honed my presentation skills so I am ready to speak up for my clients at public hearings.  Two big lessons - tell stories to make the statistics easier to digest and know when to stop talking.

Brief tangent, but I promise to circle back -

I just finished reading Made to Stick, which I highly recommend.  At the beginning of Chapter 5, Dan and Chip Heath talk about research done that proves people will donate more to a single person than to an entire cause.  The researchers at Carnegie Mellon set up a donation letter asking people to donate to Save the Children, a charity that helps kids in Africa.  A second letter described a little girl in Africa named Rokia and then asked for donations for Rokia.  The average donations for the Rokia letter were more than double that of the Save the Children letter. 

The Carnegie Mellon researchers did a subset analysis with the Rokia letter.  They asked half of a group, "If an object travels at five feet per minute, then by your calculations how many feet will it travel in 360 seconds?"  The other half of the group was asked, "Please write down one word to describe how you feel when you hear the word 'baby'."  Then they gave everyone in the group the Rokia letter and asked for donations.  The "baby" group gave about the same amount as the previous Rokia letter donators.  Those who did the math gave about half the amount of the previous Rokia letter donators.

Here is the conclusion from the Heath's, "These results are shocking.  The mere act of calculation reduced people's charity.  Once we put on our analytical hat, we react to emotional appeals differently.  We hinder our ability to feel."

TAKEAWAY - emotion is the enemy of a traffic engineer making a presentation at a public hearing.  Under most scenarios, we want the city council to make a logicial decision based on our work.  So, traffic engineers (and developers?) should warm up at a public hearing with some subtle calculations to diffuse the emotions in the room.

Comments

[Tom Domres]

Good point, Mike. As you know, folks can express a lot of emotion on the stand, and it can be an uphill battle for a traffic engineer/safety expert. I have provided testimony in a number of hearings for closing railroad crossings, and the opposition typically ranges from "we always use that route" to "I don't know how long it will take me to go another route" to "we know it is unsafe, but we know when the trains are coming."

Tom
Aurora, IL

"Warming them up" with a discussion about safety issues/crash information and then working into the hard data like the existing geometrics, average travel times and volumes does seem to work better. It is really a tough battle when there is no previous crash history at the location.