U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency $ f* ^
Transportation and Air Quality Public Information Initiative \
"It All Adds Up to Cleaner Air"
Initiative Goal
To support and facilitate state and local governments' efforts to meet their congestion and air quality
goals under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) and the Clean Air Act (CAA).
Pilot Site Tests - Summary
Three communities were chosen to create a pilot program at the local level: Dover, Delaware; San
Francisco, California; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The pilot sites were provided with technical assistance, print and broadcast creative materials, public
relations tools, and funding to assist them in designing a customized approach to support the
community's specific public involvement and informational needs in order to mitigate air quality and
congestion concerns. Each of the sites collaborated with community groups, businesses, and
environmental groups to implement and sustain the program within their own communities.
The pilot phase was intended as a learning experience to understand the strategies employed by
community-based efforts to create change and support the effective implementation of the national roll-
out.
While changing transportation-related behaviors would require sustaining an extensive public education
effort for 1-4 years, an evaluation of the pilot site phase indicated that recall of key messages, programs
and activities about the relationship between personal driving habits and local air quality increased
markedly as a result of the three pilot site efforts. The pilot evaluation was designed to assess activities
conducted at the community level, use of media messages, and the campaign's impact on the public, as
well as to provide recommendations for the launch of the 1999 demonstration community phase.
Lessons Learned & Recommendations
The findings of the pilot phase provided valuable insight in continuing to develop a national initiative
that meets the needs of a diverse array of communities, lays the foundation for a sustainable effort, and
ultimately inspires the public to take action. However, budgetary and staffing limitations impact the
selection and timing of changes made to the national initiative.
• Maintain careful balance between national and local needs. Although the initiative is ultimately
working to achieve national change, communities need to feel a sense ownership, have a variety of
options or approaches to select from, be able to customize campaign materials, and have the
flexibility to pursue local priorities,
« Engage In a strategic planning process for successful coalition development and expansion.
« Explore opportunities to share best practices throughout the campaign and encourage
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"community to community" problem solving.
• Refine Demonstration Community selection process. Selections should be based on problematic
ozone non-attainment status, mid-size markets with sufficient resources and organizational capacity
to conduct a community-based campaign,
» Provide enhanced toolkit and training workshop early so communities can start planning their
campaigns before ozone season begins.
• Provide more factual information regarding the impact of personal transportation choices. In
the pilot communities, there was significant interest in receiving messages and science-based facts
that could be localized.
• Further develop messages to provide the call-to-action for "high-awareness" communities.
• Distribute public service announcements (PSA) materials and provide background information
on development and strategy early.
« Explore options to increase PSA placement.
• Examine options to obtain a combination of donated PSA air time as well as paid media to
increase quality of coverage.
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