After almost 30 years of controversy, the delaware division of highways has begun construction of delaware route 1, the major, 47-micomponent of a new north-south limited access highway system connecting wilmington to dover and points south. The controversy was resolved through a thorough, proactive effort to involve citizens in project planning and design. The process was structured so that the community involvement effort drove the engineering design work. It consisted of a series of cycles of thorough public discussion that commenced before any design work was completed and was repeated before each major decision point was reached. The process was interactive, incorporating stages of problem definition, conceptual solutions, multiple alternative solutions, and refined alternatives and finally selected an alternative. The process met all state and federal guidelines and regulations regarding public participation. Fast resolution ofproject location and design approval, about 5.5 Years from commencing location study to construction, resulted from the effort. This experience suggests that a proactive approach to citizen involvement could benefit highway and transit agencies facing ever more challenging political environments. The experience also reveals a tangential problem in project review procedures of federal agencies, such as the u.S. Army corps of engineers and the environmental protection agency, that demand detailed review of project plans after public discussion has occurred. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1262, Planning, management and economic analysis 1990.
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