Cook County Bike Plan
Cook County Department of Transportation
R.M. Chin & Associates, Inc. (CHIN) serves as the sub-consultant to the program manager to conduct public involvement and outreach for the Cook County Department of Transportation’s first-ever bike plan. This endeavor expands the existing system of off-street trails and other low-stress routes into a coherent, countywide network. It enhances facilities to support bike commuting and other purposeful bike trips.
Our Approach
The CHIN team developed a study approach using a mixture of user-centered design, design thinking, and agile principles for this study. The methodology was designed to identify users and understand their perspectives and associated challenges with biking throughout the County to ensure all recommendations and activities meet the needs of each type of user. This approach was necessary to meet the fundamental principles of the plan: creating a lower-stress bike network, ensuring equitable bike investments throughout the County, and promoting more everyday cycling trips.
Stakeholder Outreach
A nearly year-long stakeholder engagement plan provided both on-demand and scheduled outreach opportunities to reach the maximum amount of stakeholders throughout the County. On-demand outreach techniques ensured that those who were unable to attend meetings or communicate with the project team during business hours were able to share their feedback and enabled a constant feedback and engagement loop with the project team. Scheduled outreach opportunities were provided via public open houses, focus group meetings, and meetings with a Technical Advisory Committee. The project team developed all communications materials to support engagement opportunities, geographic coverage, proximity to public transportation, and to minimize overlap with other meetings scheduled in the project area.
Stakeholder Process
The stakeholder process for this project is to develop a stakeholder engagement plan, identify stakeholders, develop a media/social media plan, create a project website, conduct surveys, facilitate public meetings and hearings, conduct interest group meetings and communicate the project to the community, including developing communications and presentation materials.
