Digital Tools Power Up Engagement and Equity in Texas

When public agencies and their consultants plan large infrastructure projects or develop community master plans, gathering and integrating public input are crucially important — and a higher priority than ever, thanks to new awareness and policies around environmental, climate, and social justice.

In Texas, WSP is using advanced technology tools such as virtual reality (VR), telephone town halls, and digital polling to engage people, businesses, and institutions more effectively than was possible with traditional stakeholder processes alone. While such tools are used by WSP worldwide, their application for communications and public involvement (CPI) in Texas has been especially impactful.

One such location-based tool — geofencing — proved invaluable in countering false information that threatened a major rapid transit project and demonstrated the critical role planning CPI can have in the early and sustained success of a project.

Stopping False Information

MetroQuest public engagement software is the main platform used by the Texas WSP team and its public clients to reach people living in or traveling through an area that will be affected by a particular project or planning process.  

“[MetroQuest] lets us drop a virtual geometry over a region as small as a room or as large as a country,” said Christopher Tarango, Texas CPI Manager for WSP. “We can tag smartphones in that geographic area and serve up messages in the form of ads on social media and other types of apps.”

When false information began spreading about a major extension of Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s (DART’s) Silver Line last year, WSP and DART used MetroQuest’s geofencing function to quickly send ads with accurate information to residents, drivers, and transit riders.

“We were able to educate the public about the facts of the project rapidly,” said Ruben Landa, WSP Texas business leader for CPI. “[Geofencing] also streamlines the gathering of valuable information with templates for surveys and crowdsourcing opinions and input, as well as providing smart communications tools.”

“This kind of approach reduces the influence of false information and allows an agency to get accurate information across to affected stakeholders,” Tarango added. He and other team members shared this experience in a presentation at the American Public Transit Association conference in June.

Technology such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams was widely used for public meetings during the pandemic. But for Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) projects in Odessa and El Paso, virtual technology has allowed Landa and his colleagues to take these platforms to another level.

For the TxDOT State Highway 18 (SH 18) North Project in West Texas, WSP employed a suite of virtual tools, from providing meeting information and materials at a singular online meeting destination, to building and offering an interactive comment map for feedback.

The team created a virtual public meeting room — an interactive website that mirrors a real-life public meeting, allowing participants to move around the room to explore and share meeting materials in an engaging and informative way.

“We shot video ahead of time of the meeting locations — everything from the entryway to the sign-in sheets,” Landa said. “We integrated that footage into the user experience, so people felt more like they were actually there.”

In building the virtual public meeting room, the team created informational board materials that were in-depth but digestible and easily navigable — provided in both written and auditory formats — with a clear call to action for the public to provide comments.

“We reflected the community in the virtual room by modeling the interior to resemble a local city building, even adding a panoramic image of Kermit, Texas, in the room’s virtual windows,” Tarango said.

Ultimately, this attention to detail combined traditional and innovative strategies, and by using tools newly available to the team, managed to involve the public in the process despite the unprecedented global pandemic.

When two VIA Metropolitan Transit station designs were proposed in San Antonio — one that was “curb running” and one that was “center running” — the community initially had questions surrounding logistical maneuverability, safety, and aesthetic appearance of the “center running” station.

Since it was a new concept for the region, and difficult to visualize, it was an ideal opportunity for WSP to develop a virtual reality (VR) model of both Advanced Rapid Transit stations proposed along San Pedro Avenue in San Antonio.

“To help community members visualize what the new station experience would be, the immersive VR model used at the project’s public meetings proved extremely useful to help attendees get a ‘street-level’ view and better understand the ‘center-running’ station,” Landa said. “As a result, the project team received more informed and valuable feedback.”

For some attendees, these meetings might have been their first experience with a VR headset, and Landa added that this cutting-edge technology provided a fun way for people of all ages to engage with project information and become invested in providing useful feedback.

Along with high-tech tools, WSP staff and their public clients still value traditional CPI methods, such as public meetings and even going door-to-door with printed documents.

“We were especially active in lower-income neighborhoods for Harris County projects that were designed to improve drainage after Hurricane Harvey,” Landa said. 

Standing out as major accomplishments by the Texas WSP team are the master plan and district area plan completed for the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas (KBHCCD).

The preferred alternative approved by the Dallas City Council in February 2022 features a renovated convention center; a multimodal transit hub; a retail/entertainment street; more walkable connections within the district, including to Dallas Memorial Coliseum and The Black Academy of Arts and Letters; and more accessibility for nearby neighborhoods.

While the KBHCCD plan itself is impressive, the inclusive planning process is what makes the Texas CPI team most proud.

“We used geofencing to communicate to universities, churches, and the low-income communities south of the convention center,” Landa said. “We engaged over 300 groups and thousands of people.”

The WSP Texas team used Mentimeter interactive presentation software to create more inclusive in-person meetings by gaining real-time sentiment and enabling residents to give creative and thoughtful input on KBHCCD topics, such as ranking which neighborhoods to prioritize for connectivity and which types of uses to encourage in the district.

“[Mentimeter] engages participants with creative and accessible digital polling and interaction tools,” Tarango said. “And because respondents can be anonymous, these tools tend to generate more input from people who aren’t assertive about raising their hands and speaking in public.”

But most digital CPI tools require that respondents have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop — and fast Internet access with Wi-Fi or a robust cellular data connection. Indeed, the “digital divide” is a well-known concern for the Texas agencies and jurisdictions WSP serves.

“We knew there were many [people] who weren’t plugged into these platforms,” Tarango said. “So we also used a ‘telephone town hall’ method to reach people who didn’t have smartphones or good Internet connection.”

Using landline and cell phone numbers acquired from voter registration files, the team automatically called and texted people to let them know about the planning process, what was at stake for their neighborhood, and opportunities for them to give input.

This high level of engagement helped sway a unanimous vote by the city council and passage by 70 percent of the referendum to fund the project with a boost in hotel taxes.

“The robust CPI process deployed digital and traditional engagement methods and resulted in a great outcome for the city,” Landa said.

“We’re using technology to communicate with the people we serve, to deliver outcomes for our clients, and to make sure we’re taking equity into account by engaging marginalized communities,” Tarango added.

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