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Measuring Customers’ Views of Transportation Planning Services: A Reusable Survey

Customers of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) who use its transportation planning services include towns, cities, counties, planning district commissions (PDCs), metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and advocacy groups. To assess VDOT’s delivery of these services and identify areas for potential improvement, approximately 300 questionnaires were distributed to customers statewide. The questionnaire categorized planning functions into seven services (performing strategic long-range planning, providing liaison services, conducting passenger planning, conducting freight planning, performing site plan reviews, assisting with modeling and quantitative analysis, and answering questions and providing technical assistance) and asked recipients to identify the providers, evaluate service delivery, and rank the services in order of importance. Customers were most interested in strategic long-range planning. Localities were most interested in site plan reviews, and MPOs, PDCs, and VDOT’s urban districts were most interested in modeling and quantitative analysis. Urban respondents ranked modeling and quantitative analysis as the service that VDOT performs best, whereas rural respondents gave answering questions and providing technical assistance this ranking. The survey cannot replace in-depth discussions between a provider of transportation planning services and its customers, but it can yield practical customer input stratified across the seven services described.