Further definition of what CSS is for transportation processes, outcomes, and decision making is provided by the following core principles, qualities, and outcomes. These core CSS principles, qualities, and outcomes apply differently depending on the circumstances, scale, and type of project. The statements below can also be used as a basis for assessing whether an activity meets CSS goals.

Core CSS Principles

• Strive towards a shared stakeholder vision to provide a basis for decisions.
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of contexts.
• Foster continuing communication and collaboration to achieve consensus.
• Exercise flexibility and creativity to shape effective transportation solutions, while preserving and enhancing community and natural environments.

CSS Qualities

Context sensitive solutions is guided by a process which:

• Establishes an interdisciplinary team early, including a full range of stakeholders, with skills based on the needs of the transportation activity.
• Seeks to understand the landscape, the community, valued resources, and the role of all appropriate modes of transportation in each unique context before developing engineering solutions.
• Communicates early and continuously with all stakeholders in an open, honest, and respectful manner, and tailors public involvement to the context and phase.
• Utilizes a clearly defined decision-making process.
• Tracks and honors commitments through the life cycle of projects.
• Involves a full range of stakeholders (including transportation officials) in all phases of a transportation program.
• Clearly defines the purpose and seeks consensus on the shared stakeholder vision and scope of projects and activities, while incorporating transportation, community, and environmental elements.
• Secures commitments to the process from local leaders.
• Tailors the transportation development process to the circumstances and uses a process that examines multiple alternatives, including all appropriate modes of transportation, and results in consensus.
• Encourages agency and stakeholder participants to jointly monitor how well the agreed-upon process is working, to improve it as needed, and when completed, to identify any lessons learned.
• Encourages mutually supportive and coordinated multimodal transportation and land-use decisions.
• Draws upon a full range of communication and visualization tools to better inform stakeholders, encourage dialogue, and increase credibility of the process.

CSS Outcomes

Context sensitive solutions leads to outcomes that:

• Are in harmony with the community and preserve the environmental, scenic, aesthetic, historic, and natural resource values of the area.
• Are safe for all users.
• Solve problems that are agreed upon by a full range of stakeholders
• Meet or exceed the expectations of both designers and stakeholders, thereby adding lasting value to the community, the environment, and the transportation system.
• Demonstrate effective and efficient use of resources (people, time, budget,) among all parties.

Why is CSS Important to Transportation Agencies?

CSS is important to transportation agencies because it can lead to better relations with their stakeholders and it can result in expedited program delivery, which can save time and money. CSS is a business approach that responds to the growing interest of the public to be meaningfully engaged throughout the transportation decision-making process. Simultaneous with this demand for more involvement from communities and other stakeholders, most transportation agencies are being asked to do more with less; therefore, it is more critical than ever that decision-making result in timely and cost effective solutions that work for the transportation agency and their stakeholders (doing the right thing the first time). Another goal of CSS is to develop partnerships with stakeholder groups such as local governments, non-profits, and other state and federal agencies which result not only in shared decision-making but shared financial responsibility.

Other benefits of CSS include:

• CSS solves the right problem by broadening the definition of “the problem” that a project should solve and by reaching consensus with all stakeholders before the design process begins.
• CSS conserves environmental and community resources. CSS facilitates and streamlines the process of NEPA compliance.
• CSS saves time. It shortens the project development process by gaining consensus early, and thereby minimizing litigation and redesign, and expediting permit approvals.
• CSS saves money. By shortening the project development process and eliminating obstacles, money as well as time is saved.
• CSS builds support from the public and from the regulators. By partnering and planning a project with the transportation agency, these parties bring full cooperation and often additional resources as well.
• CSS helps prioritize and allocate scarce transportation funds in a cost-effective way, at a time when needs far exceed resources.
• Group decisions are generally better than individual decisions. Research supports the conclusion that decisions are more accepted and mutually satisfactory when made by all who must live with them.
• CSS is the right thing to do. It serves the public interest, helps build communities and leaves a better place behind.

Additional Benefits of CSS

A range of additional benefits may be gained from implementation of CSS. For example, CSS is a great risk management strategy because the process requires early identification of issues through efforts to define the context. The CSS approach can be used to ensure compliance with federal, state and local statutes, regulations and policies. Methods to quantify the benefits of CSS are outlined in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program NCHRP Project 15-32, Quantification of CSS Benefits.

What Steps Can Help Institutionalize and Integrate CSS?

Integrating CSS into day-to-day work activities requires that transportation agencies understand and manage agency-wide organizational change and implement specific changes that impact policies, processes, functional areas, and relationships. Aligning organizational and procedural goals with CSS principles and concepts is critical to optimum success.

Key Topics for CSS Process and Project Integration

To fully institutionalize CSS, it is critical for current processes to align with CSS principles and concepts. The key topics for CSS integration for projects are listed below:

• Effective and efficient decisionmaking: Understanding how the pieces of decisionmaking from purpose and need to implementation fit together seamlessly is a key success factor for CSS. NCHRP Report 480: A Guide to Best Practices for Achieving Context Sensitive Solutions provides a good explanation of effective decision-making (see chapter 3). The presentation on CSS and Project Delivery at the national Peer Exchange in 2006 provides a high level process chart for integration at the project level.
• Comprehensive understanding of context: Understanding quality of life considerations early in the process – including links to land use and multi-modal options – is critical for efficient and effective decision-making. Properly defining the context is a major consideration in developing a problem definition that is owned by stakeholders. One example of a state DOT that has developed a context screening tool is Pennsylvania DOT. The tool is called a Community Context Audit and it is intended to be a guide to identify various community characteristics that make each transportation project location unique to its residents, its businesses and the public in general. Project for Public Spaces (PPS) created a Placemaking Audit for New Hampshire DOT as part of their CSS training program. This tool helps transportation practitioners work along side with the public to define the problem using context information. Another resource for defining context is titled, Community Culture and the Environment: a Guide to Understanding a Sense of Place. This is an EPA resource that offers a process and set of tools for defining and understanding social and cultural aspects of a community, especially as related to environmental issues.
• Flexibility in Design: Understanding the design choices available to transportation professionals is key to developing solutions that fit the context. AASHTO’s publication, A Guide to Achieving Flexibility in Highway Design, provides useful information about the flexibility inherent with AASHTO’s Geometric Design Guide (a.k.a., The Green Book).
• Stakeholder involvement: Engaging stakeholders in the decisionmaking process is fundamental to CSS. CSS is marked by a collaborative process that brings together individuals representing the project’s context in order to develop a solution. Several state DOTs have impressive public involvement manuals.
• Interdisciplinary teams: Bringing multiple disciplines together to utilize their knowledge and skills is the cornerstone of developing solutions that reflect the context. NCHRP 25-05 Synthesis Project 37-01, Multi-Disciplinary Teams in Context Sensitive Solutions, discusses these concepts.

Lessons Learned: Continuing to share lessons learned among state DOTs is critical to advancing CSS, including case studies on this website. Additional lessons learned are documented on FHWA’s CSS/D website.

Performance Measurement

Some transportation agencies are in the process of developing CSS related performance measures but little guidance or resources are available. The most noteworthy reference for CSS performance measures is NCHRP Document 69: Performance Measurement for CSS: A Guide for state DOTs. This document stresses that performance measures should reflect process, outcome, organizational and project goals. The guide clarifies that no one size will fit all transportation agencies. Furthermore the guide, states that measures for CSS should be consistent with any strategic planning efforts within an agency. The following is an excerpt from the guide: