In 1992 the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) created an extensive planning infrastructure to improve local official consultation and citizen participation in transportation planning in rural areas of the state. VTrans relied on a strong partnership with the state’s Regional Planning Commissions to create the new planning infrastructure. Today, VTrans spends more per capita on supporting local transportation planning and local official consultation than any state in the country. Twice in the last three years, the Agency of Transportation has evaluated the process and endorsed it. In 2007, the Vermont State Legislature incorporated the planning process into Vermont state law. This report describes Vermont’s 15-year old approach to meeting federal rural planning requirements and changes made by the transportation agency and partner agencies to expand that process following evaluations in 2004 and 2006. Research methods include univariate and multivariate analysis of survey data from 123 respondents, a review of federal local official consultation requirements and interviews with key participants. Particular attention in this paper is paid to the relationship between the perception of influence and participation by local officials in transportation planning. Analysis of the data indicates a relationship between perceptions of influence and participation in transportation planning. Based on the initial research, several partner agencies have made changes to their role in the TPI and their approach to local official consultation. The paper details the methodology used in the evaluation and the existing local official consultation planning process to enable practitioners to review both the overall approach and evaluation techniques.
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