Abstract Manager

Many cities have adopted plans or policies containing various strategies and actions to attain sustainable transportation objectives, including the redesign and rehabilitation of streets that favor active and public transportation. However, the implementation of any sustainable transportation plan is often riddled with various organizational and communicational obstacles. Despite the intention to better integrate these principles in street rehabilitation decision process, most of them are still engineering focused and often ignore active transportation, urban planning, public health, or environmental issues. In order to understand the reasons behind these obstacles, a qualitative research study was conducted with professionals from different fields (transportation, infrastructure, urban planning, environment and geomatic) employed in eleven cities, ranging in size from 40,000 to 500,000 inhabitants, in the province of Quebec, Canada. The objective was to paint a picture of current decision-making practices: Who is doing what and how? Why is it that way? What are the problems, the barriers and the potential opportunities? Second, we sought to explore how the process may be improved and asked the professionals to be creative and describe the characteristics of an ideal decision-making process. Common patterns among municipalities to rehabilitate, most of the time, the streets the same way as they were prior to rehabilitation work were observed. A need for new tools, strategies and decision-making processes to help municipalities to change their current practices and institutional routines was expressed by the professionals. Based on these findings, a series of guidelines are proposed to improve the integration of sustainable transportation concepts in street rejuvenation decision-making process.