As part of WTS-DC's dedication to supporting members with continued professional development, three members are selected to receive chapter funding to attend the WTS Annual Conference. This year's recipients included Neela Babu, President; May ElKhattab, Holiday Party Committee Chair; and Christine Sherman Baker, Membership Committee Chair. Here are our takeaways from several of our favorite conference sessions.

By May ElKhattab, PE, PMP, WTS-DC 

Pearls of Wisdom by Carla Harris

The keynote speech by Carla Harris was captivating and motivating. Harris stressed that being smart and working hard is not enough to maximize success. Success is maximized when you are:

• Authentic – Be you; no one can be you. Bring all of you to the table with clients and colleagues to create a circle of authenticity and comfort.
• Transparent – Always be upfront about what you know and what you do not know and when you will know what you do not know.
• Empathetic – Let your team know you feel their pain, frustration, and anxiety and share your experience and coping mechanisms.
• Generate performance currency – Performance currency is generated by delivering what is asked of you and a little extra, so it is worth 1.5 times more than normal currency.
• Generate relationship currency and leverage it – You should have three types of relationships in your career:
  • An advisor can be anybody.
  • A mentor is someone you share your most intimate feelings and secrets with, so they can give tailored advice to you and your career progression.
  • A sponsor is someone who advocates for you behind closed doors and so only tells the good. This is the most important relationship.

Be sure also to read Neela Babu's take on Carla Harris' keynote.

The Future of Innovation in Transportation

Dalia Leven, national planning lead for transit and shared mobility at Cambridge, presented on Connected Automatic Vehicles (CAV). CAVs are expected to improve roadway safety by eliminating human crashes which are 80% of traffic-related incidents, lower transportation costs, increase roadway capacity, improve mobility for all, and reduce environmental impacts of driving.

Leven's presentation focused on setting a framework for approaching CAVs within transit agencies by engaging the audience with stimulating questions: How do CAVs impact public transits? Will CAVs be owned by public agencies or private individuals/corporations? When will they arrive and will they be comfortable for everyone? Will they be affordable? Who will be able to use them? Will the use be more rural or urban? Will it push people away from the cities and into the suburbs and hence have unintended consequences?

All these captivating questions have turned me into a CAV inquisitor, and I am looking forward to the progress of innovation in transportation! 

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By Christine Sherman Baker, AICP, WTS-DC 

Meaningful Community Engagement in an Evolving World

Community engagement ensures that transportation projects and policies meet the needs and values of the community. However, community engagement can often exist in a vacuum—limited to already engaged community members. Public meeting times, locations of public meetings, languages/mediums in which information is provided, and messaging outlets are factors that potentially limit who participates in the public process. The pandemic, with the resulting necessary limits on public involvement to virtual forums, further exacerbated limitations and imbalances in engagement.

Fortunately, the challenges we faced in 2020 led many agencies and organizations to think outside the box and initiate proactive and more inclusive engagement strategies showcased at the WTS-I Annual Conference. Here are a few of those engagement strategies—both old and new—with different twists to elevate involvement from more diverse community members:

• Track social media analytics and provide targeted content in harder-to-reach areas.
• Send SMS messages within a geofenced area that informs people they passed an upcoming project site, asks their opinion, and provides information to stay engaged in the process.
• Collaborate with bilingual community members to help get messages out (this is in addition to providing translators at meetings and hosting translated materials).
• Have staff members go door-to-door, to church/community meetings, canvas, or distribute flyers to meet people where they are.
• Use the mail—it still works!  
• Maintain relationships with community leaders to help spread the word.
• Host focus groups or one-on-one meetings to connect with people on an individual level.
• Track who you are reaching by having people who attend meetings or provide input sign up for updates and include their address or zip code (this helps identify areas you are not reaching).
• Ask people directly where/when/how they would like to receive information and use that input to craft your outreach plan.

In addition, panelists provided insight on communication strategies that ensure meaningful engagement however you're able to reach people:  

• Engage in two-way conversations and be intentional about immediately addressing negative comments in a private chat.
• Ensure the communication loop is clear, telling people what you heard and how you changed the project using that information.
• Use visualization techniques like 3D ocular lenses or video flythroughs to get people closer to the project.
• Host walking or bus tours for specific projects, so people understand project needs and objectives.

The bottom line is that it is imperative for agencies to continuously adapt strategies and then assess their efficacy to build a more inclusive and equitable engagement platform that helps community members feel heard. Conversations—both big and small—go a long way in bringing new people into the public process. I look forward to applying the strategies listed above in Arlington County, where I work, and appreciate the willingness of my transportation peers to share their incredible work!  

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