Untitled Document

Public Participation Award
Interstate 84, Garrity Interchange to Meridian Interchange

Submittal: Connecting Idaho Partners (CIP)
Contributing partner: ITD, Office of Communications; RBCI
Key personnel: Reed Hollinshead (ITD, D-3), June Sparks (ITD, D-3), Rosemary Curtin (RBCI), Kate Nice (RBCI), Lance Giles (CIP), Pat Trueba (CIP)

Project details: The $113 million, high-profile project involves constructing two new lanes in both directions on I-84 between Nampa and Meridian. The project had the potential for tremendous traffic impacts, but successful proactive public outreach contributed to strong support from the community.

CIP and RBCI’s public participation efforts kept the traveling public well informed through actions such as: distributing newsletters, developing relationships with local business and community leaders, maintaining a stakeholder database for material distribution and coordinating with the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games.

The public participation team introduced a new technology called Constant Contact to provide immediate updates via e-mail about construction activity. The technology tracks every time an e-mail is opened or forwarded to another user. Recipients also can reply with questions and receive a personal response from the project team.

Because of the project’s high-profile nature, media involvement was essential to reinforce key messages. The team provided regular news releases with traffic information, created media packets with project fact sheets and hosted a bus tour of the entire I-84 West corridor for media representatives, legislators and local jurisdictions.