San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
Public Outreach and Engagement Team Strategy 

Public Outreach and Engagement Team Strategy 

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) oversees all transportation in San Francisco: the Municipal Railway transit system (Muni), parking and traffic, bicycling, walking and taxis.

As a Transit First City, the SFMTA has been tasked with ensuring that over one million people safely and reliably navigate the City every day. 

There are hundreds of SFMTA projects planned that are in various stages of the planning process and many more through 2030. Each of these projects is designed to create better roads, build safer streets and improve the transit system.

Throughout the SFMTA strategic planning process, various goals were set related to public engagement, which need to be addressed. Specifically, two goals were identified 1) increasing the transportation system’s positive impact to the economy and 2) improving relationships and partnerships with our stakeholders.

These goals will be achieved by:

• Actively involve external stakeholders to forge ongoing partnerships through concerted, continued outreach and gauge what is and is not working.
• Increase awareness and understanding of why SFMTA exists, its projects and accomplishments.
• Improve public and stakeholder engagement to build confidence in SFMTA and enable successful project delivery.
• Drive culture change to support an engaged workforce that delivers the agency vision and mission.

Comprehensive and engaging outreach has been a key concern throughout the community and often times is a barrier to successful project management and completion. In order to ensure that the various projects are delivered on time and on budget, it is increasingly important that public outreach and engagement are a key component of a project during all phases of implementation.

To address these key issues, we assisted the SFMTA in the development of a Public Outreach and Engagement Team Strategy (POETS).

The POETS model was created as a standardized model for public outreach and engagement, which will
be implemented throughout all projects conducted by the SFMTA. The objective is to enable projects to be delivered successfully to communities across all of SFMTA’s areas of responsibility. The main goal of outreach is to disseminate information about plans, services, events and projects to form better and more engaging working relationships and recruit participants in the planning process.

Additionally, POETS will assist stakeholders in appreciating and understanding the benefits of a project and educating the public about why projects are necessary; and the impact on the day-to-day lives of the residents and visitors to the City. When a project is delayed there is a significant cost to taxpayers, which is often a result of a lack of understanding of the benefits or the thought process behind the engineering or planning of a project. POETS will be critical to assist Project Managers (PMs) and Project Leads (PLs) to overcome issues; and be more efficient delivering projects on time and on budget.

(This work was executed as the Senior Communications Manager at D&A Communications)