A stakeholder engagement process for a rational decision-making process in transportation planning

Transportation planning is a complex decision-making process where different actors (decision-makers, stakeholders, professional technicians) interact each other acting in the best possible way to perform (individual) aims. In order to improve the quality of the whole planning process, a stakeholder involvement through an active participations desirable. In a participating decision-making processes, it is important to better define (and coordinate) the interactions between the different actors involved, during the whole process, focusing on the consultation and involvement phase with the various actors and stakeholders. The basic idea is that a Plan/Project for which a huge public consensus is achieved is more likely to be realized. Empirical experiences suggest that a well-structured and attended public debate can allow to enlarge the quality of the project pursuing the transportation planning aims. The term often used to indicate a public debate is Stakeholder Engagement (SE) or Public Engagement (PE), which defines the process and modalities of the interaction among decision-makers, technical designers, planner engineers and stakeholders. Although, only few Countries have actually regulated the procedures and characteristics of the PE for public infrastructure. Recently the Italian government, in law The New Contract Code, has decided the institution and the imposition of the PE for the main public infrastructures. Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper was to propose a new look for a rational public debate, defining phases and the schemes (two-stage process) within a bounded decision-making process and coherently with the Italian law.