OFFICIAL SITE OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
eMobility Planning Toolkit
Access to safe, reliable, convenient, and affordable transportation is fundamental to community prosperity. Engaging with people who live, work, and enjoy the areas affected by a transportation decision early in the planning process can help foster trust between municipal leaders and community members. This is especially important for marginalized communities that have historically been left out of transportation decision-making processes.
The eMobility planning toolkit helps local leaders identify transportation needs and preferences of residents through data analysis and meaningful engagement. This input, along with continued engagement, can then be used to develop thoughtful, community-driven solutions. Throughout the toolkit, this process will be referred to as a community transportation needs assessment (CTNA).
Community Transportation Needs Assessments: Going beyond the data.
A CTNA is focused on meaningful involvement with communities, going beyond the traditional, data-driven transportation planning process. It relies on diverse and inclusive engagement methods that strive to attain full representation from the community in order to garner residents’ perceptions, understanding, and needs related to mobility.
The results of the CTNA may indicate that the community could benefit from shared transportation programs, such as carshares, microtransit, bikeshares, and shuttle services. These programs alleviate traffic congestion and connect residents to jobs, educational opportunities, medical services, and other resources by filling mobility gaps and complementing mass transit. Additionally, using zero-emission vehicles for these shared transportation programs – a concept often referred to as eMobility – helps improve air quality in communities that are overburdened by environmental and health stressors.
Questions to Guide your Engagement & Planning
- What is the existing transportation system in the community and who has access to this system? Which overburdened or underserved groups need to be prioritized and what partners could help reach these groups?
- What barriers are preventing travel or access to work, education, health care, grocery stores, entertainment, and recreation destinations?
- What would be the main concern when thinking about transportation inside the community and connections outside of the community?
- Does transportation data reflect the mobility patterns of the community? If not, why? What are the main gaps that are shown through the data and felt needs?
- Could eMobility be a potential solution to help fill these transportation gaps? Which model or combination of models would the community prefer most?
eMobility Planning Toolkit
We’ve broken down this toolkit into steps to guide your CTNA planning.
New Jersey’s Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are a great starting point for your project, as they have transportation data and research specific to your region. Find links to each MPO’s website along with other helpful links in the General Resources section.
STEP 1: Creating a Baseline
Gather and analyze existing transportation, equity, and demographic data to understand the characteristics of your community.
STEP 2: Engaging the Community
Apply several approaches for meaningful community involvement to gain deeper insight to the transportation gaps, needs, and preferences of your community.
STEP 3: Developing Solutions
The community will be interested in your findings – be sure to show them the results! This is also a great time to incorporate additional feedback from residents and work toward transportation solutions that best meet the community’s needs.
General Resources
Each Step of the toolkit includes links to data and mapping tools to assist you. This section focuses on general resources for transportation planning.
This toolkit is inspired by the Needs Assessment Implementation Toolkit used for the Clean Mobility Options program established by the California Air Resources Board.