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Challenge

Route 367 in north St. Louis County is a nine-mile highway that suffers from congestion, a lack of accessibility and numerous traffic accidents. For nearly twenty years, the Missouri Department of Transportation tried to get citizens to approve changes to the highway, but was unsuccessful. With growing concern for motorists’ safety, the agency decided to try one last time to engage the community around upgrading Route 367.

Action

To ensure citizen participation in the design phase, Vector conducted public open houses, focus groups, stakeholder interviews and community presentations; created and managed the project’s community advisory group; wrote and designed newsletters and a project web site; and distributed mass mailings to area households and businesses. We also designed a kiosk that was on display for more than two years at a mall within the corridor. Once every two weeks, we manned the kiosk to answer residents’ questions and to create a presence for the project in the community. When it came time to designing the look of the route’s bridge overpasses, Vector put together a citizens’ aesthetic advisory team that worked closely with the design engineers to create a look that enhanced the community.


Result

Vector’s community outreach activities neutralized the underlying negative sentiment and increased citizen understanding of the importance and need for highway improvements. Various grassroots, civic and business organizations, along with residents, have now come together to support the project as one unified group. As a result in 2003, Route 367 was the only new corridor approved for funding by East-West Gateway Coordinating Council in its Transportation Improvement Program.