Beyond the Public Meeting
How Transportation Agencies Can Get a More Accurate Picture of What Their Communities Really Think
By Dr. Sara Strickhouser, Founder and CEO, Summit Survey Research
Transportation agencies spend considerable time and resources engaging the public. They hold community meetings, conduct workshops, invite public comments, and increasingly use online surveys and digital engagement platforms to gather feedback.
These efforts are essential. They create opportunities for residents to participate in decisions that affect how they move through their communities.
But they also raise an important question:
Are transportation agencies hearing from their communities or primarily from the people most likely to participate?
The distinction matters more than we might think.
As transportation agencies navigate decisions about roadway safety, transit investments, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, emerging mobility technologies, and transportation funding, understanding public opinion is increasingly important.
And while traditional public engagement provides valuable information, it doesn’t necessarily provide a complete picture of what a community thinks, needs, or experiences.
The Difference Between Public Participation and Broader Public Opinion
Imagine a transportation agency holds a series of well-attended public meetings about a proposed transportation improvement. Residents share their concerns, offer suggestions, and express support or opposition.
The agency receives meaningful feedback and can point to a successful engagement effort.
But several questions remain.
Do the people who attended reflect the broader community? Are their concerns shared by residents who didn’t participate? What do people who do not currently use (but may in the future) the transportation system being discussed think about the proposed changes?
And perhaps most importantly, whose perspectives are missing?
Public meetings tend to attract people who are aware of the opportunity to voice their opinion, have the time and resources to participate, and feel strongly enough about an issue to attend.
Meanwhile, residents balancing work and caregiving responsibilities, people with limited transportation access, and individuals who simply don’t know about the meeting may never have an opportunity to contribute.
This doesn’t diminish the value of public participation. It highlights the difference between two complementary approaches:
Public engagement creates opportunities for people to participate in decisions. Public opinion research systematically examines the experiences, needs, and perspectives of a population.
Both are important. But they answer different questions.
Why This Matters for Transportation Decision-Making
Transportation agencies are responsible for making decisions that affect thousands, sometimes millions, of people.
These decisions often involve substantial public investments, competing priorities, and communities with very different transportation needs.
Consider a few examples:
- An agency receives strong opposition to a proposed bicycle infrastructure project at a public meeting. But how widespread is that opposition across the community?
- A transit agency hears from frequent riders about service improvements. But what prevents residents who don’t currently use transit from considering it?
- A regional planning organization is evaluating transportation funding options. Which approaches have broader public support, and how do preferences differ across jurisdictions?
- An agency is considering a new mobility service. Do residents understand the service, and what factors would influence whether they actually use it?
These are questions that cannot always be answered through public comments or participation counts alone.
Without additional research, agencies risk interpreting the perspectives of the most engaged participants as the preferences of the broader community.
The result can be an incomplete understanding of community priorities, overlooked transportation barriers, or investments based on assumptions that haven’t been adequately tested.
The challenge isn’t necessarily that agencies aren’t collecting enough feedback. It’s that they may not be collecting the right information from the right populations to answer the questions that matter most.
Five Ways Transportation Agencies Can Get a More Complete Picture
1. Start With the Decision, Not the Engagement Method
Too often, the conversation begins with a method: Should we conduct an online survey? Hold a public meeting? Organize focus groups?
A better starting point is the decision the agency needs to make.
Are we trying to understand why residents aren’t using a transportation service? Determine priorities for future investments? Evaluate public acceptance of a proposed policy? Identify barriers to pedestrian safety?
Clearly defining the decision helps determine what information is needed, who should be included, and which research methods are most appropriate.
2. Look Beyond the People Already Participating
A community’s most engaged residents can provide valuable insights. But they shouldn’t automatically be treated as representative of everyone else.
Systematic research can help agencies reach populations that may be less likely to participate in traditional engagement activities.
Depending on the research objectives, this might involve carefully designed sampling strategies, mailed survey invitations, multilingual outreach, intercept surveys in the field, or a combination of data collection methods.
Importantly, reaching more people does not automatically make research representative. Who is included, how participants are selected, and which populations may still be missing all matter.
The objective should be to understand whose perspectives the research reflects and how confidently findings can be applied to the population of interest.
3. Pay Attention to Differences Hidden Within Regional Averages
Transportation needs are rarely uniform across a region.
Residents in urban, suburban, and rural communities may experience very different transportation challenges. Frequent transit users may have different priorities than people who rely exclusively on personal vehicles. Older adults, working families, and people with disabilities may face barriers that are not apparent in community-wide results.
These differences can have important implications for transportation planning.
For example, in Summit Survey Research’s 2026 Regional Transportation Survey for MetroPlan Orlando, reported microtransit use varied substantially across the three-county region.
While 11% of respondents regionwide reported using microtransit, the percentages differed by county: 27% in Seminole County, compared with 7% in Orange County and 9% in Osceola County.
These findings illustrate why regional averages alone may not tell the whole story.
Understanding differences across communities can help agencies identify where additional investigation is needed and develop strategies that reflect local circumstances.
4. Understand the Why Behind the Numbers
Surveys can tell us how frequently people use a transportation service, how they perceive safety, or which investments they prioritize.
But sometimes the most important question is why.
Why do some residents avoid public transit even when service is available? Why do people feel unsafe walking or cycling in particular areas? Why might a new mobility option appeal to one population but not another?
Qualitative research, including interviews and focus groups, can help uncover the experiences, perceptions, and decision-making processes behind survey findings.
When thoughtfully combined, quantitative and qualitative methods provide agencies with both a broader picture of community opinion and a deeper understanding of the factors shaping it.
5. Translate Research Into Information Decision-Makers Can Use
The value of public opinion research doesn’t end when data collection is complete.
Findings need to be communicated in ways that help transportation planners, agency leadership, elected officials, and other stakeholders make informed decisions.
That means moving beyond lengthy reports and presenting clear, actionable insights.
Which transportation barriers affect the greatest number of residents? Where do needs differ across communities? Which proposed investments have public support? What questions remain unanswered?
Well-designed research should help agencies understand not only what the findings are, but what they mean for the decisions ahead.
Public Engagement and Public Opinion Research Are Stronger Together
The goal isn’t to replace public meetings, workshops, or other forms of community engagement.
These activities are vital to transparent and participatory transportation planning. They create opportunities for dialogue, allow residents to contribute local knowledge, and help agencies build relationships with the communities they serve.
But engagement and research serve different purposes.
A public meeting may reveal concerns that deserve further investigation. A survey can help determine how widely those concerns are shared. Follow-up interviews may explain why certain populations experience an issue differently.
Together, these approaches can help transportation agencies make decisions that are both informed by community participation and supported by systematic evidence.
And that combination is particularly important when agencies must explain or defend difficult investment decisions.
A Question Worth Asking Before Your Next Transportation Initiative
Before launching your next community engagement effort, consider this:
If your agency were asked to demonstrate how well it understands the transportation needs and priorities of the broader community, not just those who participated, what evidence could you provide?
Would you know whose perspectives were represented? Which populations might be missing? Whether findings differ meaningfully across communities? Whether your data are sufficient to support the decision at hand?
These are not simply methodological questions.
They are questions about the quality of the information informing public investments and the confidence agencies can have in their decisions.
Not every transportation initiative requires a large-scale research study. But consequential decisions benefit from a clear understanding of what the available evidence can, and cannot, tell us.
The most effective transportation planning doesn’t just ask who participated. It asks whether we understand the community well enough to make informed decisions on its behalf.
Is Your Agency Getting the Full Picture?
We’ve developed a short Transportation Research Readiness Checklist to help transportation agencies assess whether their current research and engagement approaches provide the information needed to support planning and investment decisions.
Download the Transportation Research Readiness Checklist
Dr. Sara Strickhouser is the founder and CEO of Summit Survey Research, a public opinion research firm specializing in surveys, qualitative research, and mixed-methods studies that help government agencies and organizations better understand the communities they serve