Build Your Team - Identifying Team Projects

Who To Know | Identifying Team Projects

Identifying good projects requires two actions:

- asscessing your community's unique characteristics;
- comparing the issues you've identified with a variety of potential project ideas.

When you're thinking about projects, keep in mind this quote by Abraham Maslow:

"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

Just because a solution is attractive or has been used in a "well-known bicycle or pedestrian town" doesn't mean it fits the needs in your neighborhood. You need to clearly define your problem and then create a "target solution."

Target Solutions
We use the term "target solution" because its important to stay open to a variety of solutions to any given problem. For example, let's say you're starting with a specific problem: "A pedestrian can't safely cross Maple Street in our neighborhood." Your first thought might be that if there were a stop sign at a certain corner, pedestrians would have opportunities to cross the street. So your project becomes to erect a stop sign at this corner.

If you focus on that initial solution, without really exploring the problem itself or possible other solutions, you may end up with something that doesn't achieve your goal of helping pedestrians to cross Maple Street. Don't lock in on a solution too quickly.

Another example: someone in a small town might decide to push for bike racks for their local buses. But the bus system might be so small and times between buses so long that bicyclists could easily ride to their destinations and back before a bus arrives. In this example, starting with a solution in mind and moving directly to lobbying for its adoption creates something that solves no real problem.

Teasing Out Ideas for Projects
Does this mean it's bad to start with a solution in mind? Not at all. The thing to do is to focus on what you like about the your solution AND what you see as being wrong in your community. Use your initial idea as a way to tease out your impressions of the problem. This will help you focus more on the problem and to learn all you can about it.

Here's another example: one pedestrian problem in your community might be sidewalks that are not continuous. This initial problem statement can help direct the next step, which would be to collect data:

- where are sidewalks missing?
- which places with the most foot traffic are missing sidewalks?
- which sidewalks have small gaps and which have large gaps?
- are there handicapped residents who are forced to use the street?
- which gaps are near schools?
- what is the city's process for filling gaps in the sidewalks?

By posing such questions and doing some research, you can bore more deeply into the problem, building up an increasingly detailed picture as you develop your target solution.

Using The Four E's
While identifying projects, it might be helpful to consider the "Four E's" of bicycle and pedestrian programs:

- Engineering
- Education
- Enforcement
- Encouragement

There may be a variety of solutions tied to each of the Four E's, and those solutions will in turn suggest projects. To illustrate, consider a problem faced by many bicyclists: traffic signals that don't turn green for them, so that they have to wait for an approaching car to trigger the signal. Click here to see a variety of "Four E's" ways to solve this problem.