Acadia Center Drafts Joint Comments on Public Participation in Rhode Island’s Transportation Planning

Acadia Center joins the Conservation Law Foundation and ten (10) other organizations in offering comments and suggested changes to an update to the RI Division of Statewide Planning’s Public Participation Plan. Recommendations range from meeting notices to virtual meeting accessibility and engagement, and in-person amenities such as food and childcare. The plan fails to provide baseline data or transparency around the current state of public participation, such as meeting attendance, public comments provided (spoken, written or electronic), or the public participation activities actually leveraged in recent years. An understanding of the effectiveness of current public participation activities is necessary to then improve public engagement and outreach. As advocates, we would like to see a tangible and transparent commitment to the information dissemination, targeted consultation, and general participation strategies outlined in this plan for the upcoming update to the State’s Long Range Transportation Plan (“LRTP”) and the solicitation of project proposals, public review, and adoption of the State Transportation Improvement Program (“STIP”).