Swedish municipalities and public participation in the traffic planning process – Where do we stand?

In this paper public participation in Swedish municipal traffic planning is studied with the focus onto what extent and how municipalities and consultants interact with participants in traffic-planning processes. Telephone interviews with planners were performed and planners’ insight and knowledge of participation methods are analysed in order to give an indication of which prerequisites seem to determine potential involvement of users. The results imply that recurring user involvement is rare in the municipalities studied and that the planner’s attitude towards participation seems to be a determining factor, aside from resources like time and money. There seems to be good general knowledge of user involvement among the interviewed planners, but the level of understanding of methodological issues is considerably higher in municipalities where interaction is a recurring part of the planning. The results in this study imply that it might be relevant to balance which level of involvement is the most desired against what is possible in terms of resources and competence.