Deliberative appraisal methods

Deliberative appraisal methods have gained popularity in recent years, due to an increased demand for public participation in government decision-making. There is a recognition that transportation policy appraisals need to take account of a diversity of views and disciplines, for which deliberative approaches are considered ideal. In comparison with other forms of citizen consultation or participation, deliberative approaches are regarded as the most promising in terms of fulfilling democratic ideals such as inclusiveness, equity and transparency. They are hence also likely to increase the legitimacy of decisions. Due to their unique characteristics, deliberative appraisal methods hold the potential to resolve some of the issues associated with commonly used traditional appraisal methods. Because of this, approaches that combine both traditional analytic and deliberative aspects are increasingly sought after, but remain in the early stages. Deliberation is based on the premise that a diverse group of citizens, if given adequate information, resources and time to deliberate on a given topic, can produce a rational, informed judgment. Participants must consider a question from multiple viewpoints, exchange perspectives, opinions, and understandings and think critically about all possible options. This process has been shown to build civic capacity, produce better decisions and provide unique and useful insights for policy-makers. A deliberative event may include a small group of participants or many hundreds. Purely deliberative approaches may result in qualitative outputs such as a verdict or report, whereas analytic-deliberative approaches may involve monetizing values, voting or ranking in order to reach workable recommendations. While the application of deliberative approaches in the transport domain is still in its early stages, this chapter provides an overview of the best-known deliberative approaches in use in policy-making today as well as introducing new developments in the physical and online spaces.