Marketing of Access Management - 1998 APA Proceedings


Marketing of Access Management	.
Del Huntington	Author Info

Abstract

Access management is often a difficult concept to present to the public since it spans traffic engineering disciplines, safety considerations, economic concerns, philosophy and private property owners rights, either real or perceived. Also, many people believe that they are experts simply because they use the facility. New and innovative methods to communicate the benefits of an Access Management Program are necessary. This paper will illustrate some of the difficulties in introducing access management to a varied audience, identify some of the communication needs, discuss a philosophy of learning and explain one presentation technique that involves the participants.

Introduction

Consider a scenario where community members had a concern over a proposed highway bridge replacement. The consultant's submitted design would severely restrict the sight lines of a panoramic view of the mountains. A grass roots organization was formed and proceeded to make several assaults on the city council, county commissioners, newspapers, and attached itself to environmental efforts. Several strategies were prepared that could effectively shut down the project through the court process if the project indeed made it that far. Further, the state transportation agency and the feds determined that public consensus and a win-win outcome was of utmost importance.

In a public meeting, city leaders, county commissioners and local citizens joined efforts to redesign the new interstate bridge. It was immediately apparent that the engineer had erred by proposing 12' girders when a more palatable two inches should suffice. Since the span was only a half-mile in length, the necessity of the four massive columns also came into question. After a profitable 20-minute discussion it became obvious that they preferred a clear span, thus eliminating the need for any columns to support the structure. While these two simple changes in design guaranteed a better view of the mountains, it also meant that tremendous cost savings would be likely. These significant design improvements were accomplished in a mere two hours. The lead agency realized the need to achieve consensus, so accepted all the modifications.

Obviously this example is preposterous. Local citizens usually accept that the engineer knows what it will take to provide a safe, strong and durable bridge.

In most engineering disciplines, the public seldom concerns itself with the exterior appearance. If they do, the engineer can often provide concessions without compromising the structural integrity. Examples might include the exterior walls of a building, perhaps changing the color or a facade over a steel infrastructure. In certain disciplines, such as those employed in bridges, dams and aircraft, the external design is essential to the structural integrity or its ability to function. The public generally leaves those design decisions to the experts.

In traffic engineering, the design and the exterior appearance of the roadway is critical. These elements determine the very function and the structural integrity, and that is where the motorist operates and behaves. However, this is one engineering discipline where the public can become very passionate and attempt to require changes that are acceptable to them.

When experts in traffic engineering list the needs and the designs necessary to provide a safe and efficient solution for a roadway, motorists, politicians, developers and private-property owners suddenly become experts.

Since the motorist is constantly and intimately involved in the roadway environment, many believe they know what works best. "I've driven on this road everyday for the past 30 years. I know what works and what doesn't". The motorist and the engineer/designer can often be at odds. There are definite opinions about issues such as where traffic signals should be placed, the optimum travel speed, proper median treatments, the number of travel lanes, and the spacing and design of driveways.

A major consideration of traffic engineering is the largely unknown and uncontrollable behavior of the motorist who operate in the design. This becomes more complex as motorists vary in age from 16 to 100, each with different reaction times, skills, experience, and willingness to adhere to the laws. They also operate a vast array of vehicles that have tremendously different performance characteristics. There are other users of the system as well, such as pedestrians and bicyclists that are from all ages, again with incredibly diverse skills and perceptions.

One of the most critical components of traffic engineering is Access Management. Access Management is a strategy and implementation of various techniques "to ensure the safe and efficient flow of traffic through the road system and access to their destination".1 These techniques vary from driveway spacing to the treatment of medians and location of traffic signals. Its success lies in understanding the need for all levels of a functional hierarchy of roadways and ensuring that the roadway environment and amount of access are consistent with that function. A local road would allow numerous accesses, while the highest level road would allow only properly spaced interchanges.

These seemingly simple tools and philosophies can explode into contentious issues, especially when it may appear to violate a property owner's rights, either real or perceived.

These concerns often spiral into issues that may involve economists, business people, environmentalists, lawyers, developers, planners, transportation engineers and technicians. They encompass the spectrum from economic/land use issues and planning through transportation planning, design, safety, operation and control of facilities. The considerations are as broad as the economic health of a community or transportation corridor, and as specific as a site plan and the dimensions of a driveway. It is no wonder that presenting the access management issues to the public is such a challenge. They are being asked to understand the broad issues, benefits and consequences, while they may have a limited base of knowledge and understanding. In addition, they may have a different philosophy as to the roadway's purpose and how it should function. As if that does not make the problem confusing enough, the experts within the traffic engineering profession may contradict and disagree with one another.

A property owner may not understand the impact that one or two driveways will have on the roadway, especially if it helps to maximize the site circulation on the property. They may believe that the governing agency is simply making broad bureaucratic policies to make life more complex.

Since traffic engineering proposals, specifically access management strategies are often open to the public involvement process, it is critical that we communicate the issues as clearly as possible to achieve some level of acceptance.

Remember that the audience will likely represent many years of driving experience. During those years, many have likely developed solutions that they believe would solve all the traffic problems, some may not believe that a problem even exists. Also, they will have a strong emotional tie to the issue. That, when combined with their experience, results in a very determined audience.

The following is an example presentation of how not to convert a general audience to the benefits of access management. If you use the process described below, you assuredly will alienate the audience and may cause them to become more determined in their belief of the "proper" solution.

The following is a "slightly" exaggerated example of a technical explanation.

"We at the local transportation agency need to make some improvements, Sir/Mam'm, you are the owner of this gas station, correct? When you look at the functional hierarchy of the roadways is this area; it immediately becomes obvious that Hwy 22 is a major arterial, whereas 1st Street functions as a major collector. We must ensure that traffic on the major arterial can continue to meet a required progression of a minimum speed of 22 mph with a 55% green band at a 120-second cycle length during the peak hour. The peak hour in this case is equivalent to the 30th highest hour, which also incidentally will be used as the design hour.

Since the saturation flow rate is 1800 vehicles per lane per hour on the through move and 1760 for left-turning vehicles, it becomes painfully obvious that we will achieve an unacceptable Level of Service (LOS). Probably as poor as LOS E or maybe even F. Now I know that another consultant told you that they could achieve a LOS D, but that was using the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) methodology that is based on Delay. However, we require you to evaluate this situation on a Volume to Capacity basis for a 20 year planning horizon. This will ensure sufficient capacity to optimize the signal in the future. I'm sure you can understand our need. In addition, the traffic queues will stack up to 450', which will prevent traffic from using the turn lanes since the flare and storage area is only 250'. The turn lanes are necessary to allow the turning motorists to exit the through lanes, to provide a separate signal phase for turning motorist and to reduce the speed differential. An increase in the speed differential is a major cause of accidents. In fact, when the speed differential is 35 miles per hour (which is the same as 58 kilometers per hour under the metric system), a motorist is 180 times more likely to be involved in an accident than those motorists traveling at the same speed as the through traffic.

Motorists will not be able to access your property from the continuos two-way left turn lane (CTWLTL) since there will not be any opportunities to achieve the required acceptable gap of 6.5 seconds. It fact, it becomes self-regulating. As a result, you shouldn't mind having a non-traversable median installed. Incidentally, national studies have clearly demonstrated that the CTWLTL become a safety concern when the Average Daily Traffic (ADT) exceeds 24,000-28,000. Since this highway experiences an ADT of 35,000, the choice is clearly obvious. The existing traffic accident rate for this section of roadway is 6.834 per million vehicle miles (MVM) traveled, which is tremendously high. This project should reduce the accident rate to 2 or 2.5 per MVM.

Normally this would mean that your access would be limited to a right-in, right-out only condition. That will be true in this case, however we will need to remove the access closest to the signal on the upstream side of the intersection. This is necessary to allow us to build an exclusive right turn decel and storage lane.

So, this means that you cannot have the access."

Keep in mind that when we toss engineering jargon around, the listener may not be thinking the same thing. For example when we say:

250' queue, they think its something you need when you're playing on a 400' pool table.

Cycle length suggests the length of time you can sit on a mountain bike, whereas Stacking is one of the benefits of Tupperware.

Acceptable gap is where a plumber should wear his blue jeans, while

Green band is something you experience from wearing a cheap ring.

Upstream and Downstream distance is the best place to fish.

VMT is what your father calls your favorite music video cable channel.

A Major arterial is an army officer responsible for weapons, whereas

A Major Collector is a serious dude with the IRS. A Non-traversable median is a cross dressing clairvoyant.

Remember that if the dialogue is filled with acronyms, the audience will spend all of their energy trying to decipher the last confusing encoded string of words. The topic of Access Management has a lot of completely new terminology that can easily confuse the participants. An insightful man often said, "A wise person replaces one long word with two simple ones".2

The ability to quote statistics and facts relating to safety and capacity is very valuable, yet people may be hesitant to believe in numbers. The challenge is to learn new and innovative methods of presenting the access management alternatives, designs or decisions in ways that give them an appreciation for the impacts, benefits and consequences. Keep in mind that the components of access management are not clearly understood by a significant number of the technical/engineering people working in transportation, let alone the public at large.

To communicate effectively, it is desirable to select the most appropriate communication method. You must determine;

Who is your audience? Have you considered the impacts from their perspective?
What is the purpose of the communication? Are you trying to achieve general awareness, political buy-in, or project approval? Are you introducing new concepts or are you trying to persuade? What action do you expect or hope to achieve?
Are you thoroughly familiar with all the important information on the issue or design? Can you answer all the questions? If not, is there someone who can?
What general ideas, concepts, opinion or conclusions should be stressed? What are the facts that must be presented?

The next task is to determine how the information will be presented. The following graphic illustrates the effectiveness of different presentation methods.

Table 1: Rates of Retention

Adapted from Control Theory in the Class, Dr. William Glasser, 1986 3

Stated in another way is the proverb,

Tell me and I forget,
Show me and I remember,
Involve me and I understand. 4

Consider the potential success you might have if you could describe safety and operational concerns in an interactive environment. The goal is to relate to their experience, emotions and memories so that the audience could be made to "feel" the issues.

Now perform the same demonstration with the public using miniature cars on layouts that show an aerial view of a highway with various highway cross sections, with and without a median barrier. Allow the public to participate in the exercise.

Showe a motorist using the exclusive left turn lane waiting for a gap to turn left in advance of the intersection, thus preventing other motorists from reaching the intersection in order to turn left on the left turn phase, OR developing a queue in the upstream through lane.
Show the number of potential conflict points between 5 approach roads with a CTWLTL (150) as opposed to the same five approach roads when there is a restricted median.(10)
Show a motorist turning left on the downstream side of the intersection, creating traffic queues through the intersection.
Show how motorists wanting to make a left turn often become frustrated and begin to gamble with unacceptable gaps in the travel stream.
Describe the problems that a pedestrian faces when attempting to cross a busy 5-lane section.
(Rural) Describe the closing distance of two oncoming vehicles in a CTWLTL on a 55 mph highway. Discuss the reaction time, and stopping distance.

Some other effective methods of communication:

A well-developed slide show on access management with good examples and professional graphics can be very beneficial. When well prepared, it can immediately increase the audience's perception of your knowledge of the topic. For controversial issues, it also helps to reduce unwanted questions during the presentation until a more favorable question and answer time.
Describe the terminology in terms that people can identify with. Many technicians and engineers describe accident rates per Million Vehicle Miles (MVM), such as 7.5 accidents per MVM. However, few people understand what it means. A more successful method would be to discuss a mile section of highway that the audience is familiar with, and explain the existing daily traffic volumes. Calculate how may calendar days it would take to realize 1,000,000 miles. For example, a mile section of highway with an ADT of 33,000 will achieve a MVM in 30 days. Therefore, on the one-mile section of road, there will be an average of 7.5 accidents every 30 days or an average of one accident every four days.
When you use examples in your communication that people can immediately relate to, they are more likely to remember and realize the benefits. This is supported by research "when subjects are able to construct their own images, greater memory or learning occurs".5 A couple of examples are:
Explain "Level of Service" and "Peak Hour" by comparing it to the waiting lines at a fast food restaurant during lunchtime.
Describe the benefits and use of exclusive travel lanes by comparing them to the fast lines at a Supermarket. Also describe what happens when someone violates the line by writing a check instead of cash only or shows up with 30 items in the cart instead of the maximum of 10.

I believe that there are many ways that we can improve at marketing an Access Management program or strategy. This presentation is not meant to be an end but rather should be considered a stretching of your imagination to consider creative ways to communicate and involve the audience.

Remember,

Tell me and I forget,
Show me and I remember,
Involve me and I understand. 4

Footnotes

1 Koepke, F.J., and Levinson, H.S., Access Management Guidelines for Activity Centers, NCHRP Report 348, Transportation Research Board, 1992.

2 Taken from my Dad, Huntington, J.E. (Ted).

3 Adapted from, Dr. William Glasser, Control Theory in the Class, New York Perennial Library, 1986.

4 Chinese Proverb

5 Cohen, LeoNora M., in: Thinking International Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Edwards, John. Melbourne: Hawken. Browlow (Ed) (1994)

Del Huntington
Access Management Coordinator
Oregon Department of Transportation