At Arizona’s 29th Annual Transit Conference, Network member Erik Johnston and Network post-doc John Harlow, both of Arizona State University’s Center for Policy Informatics, will receive the Outstanding Transit Innovation Award from the Arizona Transit Association and Arizona Department of Transportation. The event is “the premier transit conference for Arizona” and features “the latest in technology, equipment, supplies, and services.”
Johnston and Harlow are receiving the award based on their creation of an information-rich, gamified system for developing Proposition 104, the new transportation plan for Phoenix.
About Johnston and Harlow’s work on Proposition 104:
“An ASU team led by Dr. John Harlow with professors Eric Hekler, Erik Johnston and graduate student Zoë Yeh, collaborated with Phoenix’s Public Transit and Street Transportation Departments and the Citizens Committee on the Future of Phoenix Transportation (CCFPT) in the development of Proposition 104, the recently passed transportation plan for Phoenix.
The proposal funds the next 35 years of transportation in Phoenix, with an estimated $31.5 billion raised through a 0.7% citywide sales tax. The bill covers expanded bus service hours, increased bus service frequency, complete streets investments, and new bus and light rail routes.
The ASU team established a process that simplified the complexity of producing a 35-year, citywide transportation plan into a series of information-rich decisions represented by tactile game pieces. The game was prototyped and refined in two ASU graduate courses in behavior change and public administration. The objective was to create an information-rich decision environment, in which CCFPT members could articulate and explain their perspectives.”
