City Achievement Award for Public Works & Transportation for “McCall’s Transportation Master Plan (TMP) Story Map.” The award will be presented during the AIC Annual Conference in Boise on Thursday June 21.
Municipal transportation plans are often weighty documents filled with statistics, road condition reports, project descriptions, multi-modal analysis, street sections, maintenance charts, engineering recommendations and more. Communicating these complex components in a way that allows members of the public to fully understand and respond to a transportation plan can be challenging but is essential to gaining community support for the implementation and long-term success of the plan. So, when the City of McCall launched McCall in Motion, the city’s first Transportation Master Plan, and did it in tandem with an update to the McCall Comprehensive Plan, city staff from multiple departments worked together to create and promote the Transportation Master Plan Story Map (TMP Story Map) with the goal of making the transportation plan easy to follow, engaging, and relevant to community members.
McCall’s Story Map provides an excellent example of how the use of baseline GIS capacity and cross-department collaboration between Planning, Public Works, GIS and Communications staff can result in better understanding and support for transportation planning efforts and future streets projects twithought requiring additional funding.
McCall’s TMP Story Map is an online, web-based application that utilizes the McCall’s existing GIS capabilities (basic ESRI suite) to offer the public an interactive way to explore data using static graphics as well as interactive and searchable maps. The TMP Story Map follows the same format as the Transportation Master Plan and includes much of the information presented in the core of the Plan and its appendices but is presented in an easily-navigable format that allows users to view data and projects that are of most interest. By choosing clearly labeled tabs, such as the “What is planned for your street?” interactive tab, the TMP Story Map allows users to search existing road conditions, crash data, parking capacity, road treatment and maintenance schedules, upcoming road reconstruction projects, and future street sections specific to streets near them. The TMP Story Map website also incorporates the McCall Area Pathways Master Plan and links back to the Comprehensive Plan update web page so that all data is automatically consistent between the plans. Once drafted, a small citizen focus group tested the online Story Map to ensure that it was comprehensive yet easy to navigate and understand. Use of the Story Map was encouraged throughout the planning process via the City’s main website, Facebook and blog posts, e-newsletter blasts, and ads in the local paper. To date, the TMP Story Map has been utilized 2,406 times, a considerable number for a community population under 3,000.
McCall’s Story Map provides an excellent example of how the use of baseline GIS capacity and cross-department collaboration between Planning, Public Works, GIS and Communications staff can result in better understanding and support for transportation planning efforts and future streets projects twithought requiring additional funding.
Screen shots from the McCall in Motion TMP Story Map are attached, but to experience the full interactive scope of the McCall Transportation Master Plan Story Map, please visit the City of McCall Web Site at http://www.mccall.id.us (click on Maps/GIS tab) or follow this direct link:
http://mccall.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=db9a51a795c54918946874aff4ff3c98
