Statewide Transportation Planning: Surveys of State Departments of Transportation and Regional Planning and Development Organizations (GAO-11-78SP, December 2010), an E-supplement to GAO-11-77

Background

This e-publication supplements our report, Statewide Transportation Planning: Opportunities Exist to Transition to Performance-Based Planning and Federal Oversight (GAO-11-77). The purpose of this e-publication is to provide information from two Web-based surveys: a survey of transportation planning activities of state departments of transportation (state DOT) and a survey of transportation planning activities of regional planning and development organizations (RPDO).

The state DOT survey was designed to obtain information on state DOT (1) staffing, (2) planning activities and challenges, (3) oversight provided by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, (4) processes for consulting with nonmetropolitan local officials including RPDOs, and (5) use of performance measurement in planning. The state DOT survey was conducted between April 20, 2010, and June 18, 2010 and was administered to DOTs in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, for a total of 52 respondents. To establish this list of potential respondents, we obtained contact information current as of March 4, 2010 from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials' Standing Committee on Planning. We received completed surveys from all 52 DOTs.

The RPDO survey was designed to obtain information regarding RPDO transportation planning activities and their participation in and satisfaction with state DOT statewide planning efforts. The RPDO survey was conducted between May 17, 2010, and June 28, 2010. It was administered to 564 organizations contained in the National Association of Development Organizations' database of regional planning and development organizations across the country. To ensure the reliability of the database, we interviewed National Association of Development Organizations officials on its characteristics and determined it to be sufficiently reliable for our needs. Because the database did not contain organizations in Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, we identified a total of five organizations from those states that conducted some regional planning activities and sent them surveys. We received completed surveys from approximately 72 percent of the organizations surveyed.

Survey results in this e-publication are presented in aggregate form so that no individual DOT or RPDO responses can be viewed. To view the responses to each question, click on the question number. After viewing the responses to each question, click on the "x" in the upper right corner of your screen to close that window and return to the questionnaire. For both surveys, we excluded responses to open-ended narrative questions and categories with no responses. See the full report (GAO-11-77) for a more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology as well as a discussion of the survey results.

We conducted our work from October 2009 to December 2010 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives

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