Crossing the Finish Line
Build quickly.
With the foundation of an established shared goal and aligned and resourced partners, the city and community partners can now hit the ground running. Through strategic guidance and the power of public support, everyone in the partnership works in sync, and projects move from development to delivery.
Build quickly is the concluding step in The Playbook. At this step, everything comes together— the city’s process for project delivery, community supporters who know and are well-resourced to engage their neighbors, and a broad communications campaign ready to underline the overall message. Now it’s time to hit the pavement and go build.
During this implementation period, the city and community partners convene every 3 months to refine and refocus, then continue building—again and again. This sustains momentum, maintains support, and creates a city that residents desire and deserve.
Trust grows between residents and the city when promised plans cross the finish line. Too often, urgent infrastructure changes take years to implement after tremendous energy goes toward pushing for their approval. If promises go unfulfilled, this frays trust with the public, so building quickly is a must in The Playbook.
The city of Austin is a model for building quickly. In just 2 years, the city completed 115 miles of new bikeways with the support of MoveATX and the guidance of Sara and Kyle, who led The Final Mile.
As MoveATX supported the city’s efforts, they launched a broad communications campaign utilizing various media types, particularly out-of-home ads, to convey widespread support for the street changes being implemented by the city. The ads showcased the various types of infrastructure and how it would help residents move about their streets safely. It was beneficial that the city diversified what they were building—not just bike lanes, but pedestrian crossings, left turn pockets, transit stops, and more. The coalition was then able to engage and communicate mobility benefits to all residents.
“One of the most resonant memories I have of this acceleration period was when neighborhoods came to us saying, ‘When will you protect this bike lane?’ Which we had never heard before,” says Laura Dierenfield, City of Austin active transportation and street design division manager. “It was almost like we couldn't move fast enough. The community had gained an understanding of what these [street changes] were.”
Making this stride toward completing Austin’s All Ages and Abilities (AAA) Bicycle Network would have been more difficult if the cadence had been slower and the efforts with MoveATX out of sync. City Thread aims to reduce the time between planning and execution while encouraging residents to engage in the process consistently and predictably. For this to be successful, city officials need to portray the project as a unified network, clearly specifying what will be constructed, the locations of the impact, and ensuring this information is easily comprehensible for all residents.
“A lot of times, voters think, ‘Well, I voted for that. It's just going to happen.’ But what happens is the city tries to engage authentically with the neighborhoods to lessen the impact, and these projects get watered down,” says Jim Wick, Lead Organizer of Coalition MoveATX. “So consistently demonstrating support in the media at the neighborhood level through the city's public engagement process helped stiffen the backbone of policy implementers and people at the ground level.”
Austin was able to build quickly by being proactive, transparent, and laying the track for city staff and community partners to work together as one toward the shared goal.
Let’s build together. Contact us at hello@citythread.org.
