Omaha asks its residents what their transportation priorities are

Recently the City of Omaha hired a private consulting firm to interview voters in Omaha over the phone about how they get around, how they would like to get around, and how they would like the city of Omaha to spend transportation dollars.

The study found that people want more transportation choices, they want roads to be maintained, and they want more money to be spent on sidewalks and other pedestrian infrastructure. 54% would like to spend less time in their cars, and 72% say that they have no choice but to drive as much as they do. 74% say that they would still prefer to drive even if they had other choices which still leaves 26% who would really like to be doing things differently. There are also lots of people who would like to usually drive, but maybe not always drive.

This post is based on a report (PDF) by Public Opinion Strategies, a public research firm with ties to the Republican party. That actually makes this report pretty convincing as the bias of the researchers would be to downplay support for public transportation. We can see this bias at work in the question where they ask voters in Omaha how much money should be spent on various forms of transportation. POS did not include public transportation in that question. They also conflated bus and pedestrian infrastructure even though voters obviously distinguish these two things. For example, sidewalks and pedestrian crossings are the second highest transportation priority for the people who took this study while bike infrastructure is the lowest.

On the other hand, the survey takers only asked people if they would support increasing funding for public transportation. 72% said they wanted public transportation to be increased, and 57% said that they would be willing to pay more taxes to do so. As far as I can tell, voters were not asked if they would be willing to pay more taxes to fund sidewalks or new roads.

I know that DRCOG did a similar survey in metro Denver, although I do not think think it was as extensive. I think that the people that they surveyed thought that walkability was very important, more important than for the people of Omaha. I would like to compare the two studies to see how they are different.