How to involve local administration in participative traffic monitoring

General Discussions
4

Hi Alessandro,

Thanks indeed for raising this interesting and important question! May I ask where you are based? Just to get an idea of the type of town and government. I understand that you want to get a dialogue going with your local policymakers about mobility issues and how Telraam can help solve them? It’s a very good idea to gather some arguments and good practices, as well as illustrating the usefullness of your own data before the conversation starts.

Here are some tips, links and advices I can directly share:

  1. Think about the benefits for policymakers
    Telraam has a great page on their website in Dutch, English and French for professionals / policymakers about what Telraam can do for them. It includes testimonals from policymakers and highlights what’s in it for them. Read it here: Telraam

  2. Analyse your own data and illustrate some interesting aspects
    The best way to show you local government what they can do with Telraam is to present your own data: maybe you found out that there are many cyclists in combination with a lot of cars which leads to a lot of conflicts? Or you noticed a lot of heavy traffic in a small street profile? Or you spotted a lot of speeding at a certain time during the day? Or you’ve noticed changes in the numbers because of a certain intervention? … All of this is easy to analyse in your dashboard and you can share reports and images with externals.
    Here are some tools to get you started with basic data analysis:

  1. Get your neighbours on board
    Having some back-up from your neighbours or the people living in the main street is a good way to get your policymakers listening. We have a great flyer you can put in the mailboxes to inform them about the existance of your Telraam. It should be available in English somewhere as well. And we also have it in French. Here’s the dutch one:
    Telraam Flyer buren (1).pdf (1.2 MB) Let me know if you need it in a certain language. And If you have a window on street level you can also put a sign out or write the numbers on your window with a window marker like this person in Leuven did.

telraam raamtekening
telraam raamtekening2000×1414 473 KB

  1. Gather successtories
    There are already a lot of successtories from all over the world were Telraam helped to improve local descicion making about mobility. As @Rob_Telraam already mentioned it is worth looking at the Telraam blog for these stories. And also right here on this platform we are sharing stories and expierences. Like this one about evaluating trial measures in a medium sized town in Belgium might be helpful to illustrate how Telraam can be used as a before, during and after measurement for mobility interventions: Zandhoven: Evaluating trial mobility measures with Telraam - #3 by sanne.vanderstraeten.
    Furthermore we are trying to get more citizen experts on this platform to share their successtories themselves. So hopefully soon you’ll get some insights from them directly about convincing policymakers.

  2. Set a meeting with your local government and prepare a presentation
    Once you have gathered relevant arguments and you’ve triggered the interest of your policymakers it’s a good idea to set a meeting and prepare a structured presentation. Here are some tips from my colleague: Meeting with your local government. We are always happy to help with this!

Hopefully this already gets you started! Don’t hesitate to ask more specific questions and definately keep us informed about how it is going. :wave:

2 Likes