Using optimization to program projects in the era of communicative rationality

This paper presents an innovative approach to transportation programming in which optimization is a catalyst for public participation. Public participation is central to the paradigm shift that has occurred in transportation planning toward “communicative” methods. A case study is presented in which 133 public participants deliberated over a programming decision involving a local transportation tax. The paper explains how the problem was formulated for deliberation and describes the participatory benefits of providing an optimization tool. Participant feedback suggests the tool helped motivate, structure, and inform the deliberation.