City of Lawton wants broad community participation in creating new transportation plan

City of Lawton transportation entities want to ensure strong community participation as they update Lawton’s Metropolitan Transportation Plan.

That document outlines the city’s plans through 2050 for all aspects of transportation, from driving lanes on the busiest arterials, to sidewalks, to bike trails.

“All travel modes — any way you move people or goods through Lawton,” said Jonathan Whitehurst, senior planner with Kimley-Horn, the firm the Transportation Technical Committee and Transportation Policy Board of the Lawton Metropolitan Planning Organization hired to update a long-existing city transportation plan.

The idea behind the plan is setting Lawton’s transportation needs for the next 20 years, which is why community participation is crucial, members of the Transportation Technical Committee said. Residential comments will be blended with analysis that Kimley-Horn already is doing and comments from transportation-related entities, to identify the projects Lawton should be tackling in the next 20 years. It’s not only generic projects: the plan is designed to set priorities for projects that can be accomplished with available funding.

That funding won’t be enough to do every project on the list, Whitehurst said.

“That’s why we prioritize,” he said, adding analysis will help identify total available funding so city officials can see “how far down the list we can move.”

Whitehurst said the bulk of Kimley-Horn’s work should be done by June, with an eye toward having Lawton entities (including the City Council) adopt the plan by Fall. Federal officials say the plan must be set into place by December, and Whitehurst said Lawton will easily meet that deadline.

With the bulk of research accomplished, the next step is public participation and that is where Lawton officials feel the project may fall short. Traditionally public comment has been limited — committee members said public meetings held during the last update session drew only five participants.

The benefit to residents is a look at what projects Kimley-Horn and city transportation officials think should be in the transportation plan, along with estimated costs. Community participation means residents can offer their opinions on what is to be done and when, city officials said.

Two public meetings/workshops still are planned — probably in June — but officials also want to use online surveys to hit a larger and broader range of people, Whitehurst said. Part of Kimley-Horn’s efforts will include activating a public website (that site will be announced soon) so residents can take the online survey. Transportation Technical Committee members David Madigan and David Denham said officials must work to ensure a broader participation, with other committee members suggesting entities with a large work force could participate, such as Fort Sill, Lawton Public Schools and the City of Lawton.

Whitehurst said survey questions already have been designed, with a centerpiece that would give those taking the survey a designated amount of money so they could allocate funds to specific project areas.

“We want to ask the public where they would spend transportation money,” Whitehurst said, adding Kimley-Horn will compare community responses to suggestions made in-house and by transportation officials to craft the final project list.

The list will cover a broad range and include projects that would be nice to have, but ones that may not be done because funding isn’t available. At least, not yet, Whitehurst said.