Data-Driven Community Engagement: The Power Behind using the Right Tools

The Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Southern Nevada launched the On Board Mobility Plan Survey 4, beginning in November 2021 and ending in January 2022. A forward-thinking concept created in partnership with the community, On Board is designed to strengthen and diversify the region’s transportation network, while providing more options to meet the needs of the broader population.

Through Survey 4, the agency returned to the community to ask whether the On Board plan still accurately captured transit and non-transit riders’ vision of an ideal future regional transportation network, their priorities and preferred investments, or if the community’s priorities had shifted during the pandemic. Over several months, the survey teams attended hundreds of events designed to attract specific segments of the population, such as seniors, veterans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, African Americans, and the underserved.

The survey garnered more than 15,000 responses and landed the RTC’s On Board survey among MetroQuest’s Top 10 performers of all time in terms of total surveys returned, and, most notably, No. 1 in its platform history as it relates to engaging the Spanish-speaking community.

The RTC session will focus on the strategies that were developed using MetroQuest, plus share some key insights into preparing the right questions to get the right data from the right audiences using the right tools.

Takeaways:

You will leave this session with an understanding of:

• The importance of having an organized survey deployment, from creating advertising and media opportunities to web-based strategies and data analysis, and more;
• Remembering equity and making sure your survey teams represent (i.e., look like) the community they are surveying;
• The importance of weekly check-in meetings to identify gaps and plug in additional resources/capacity where community feedback has been lagging.