TDM Week Spotlight: TDM Education Day at the Wisconsin State Capitol
During this year’s policy-focused TDM Week, ACT’s Midwest Chapter Policy Chair and City of Madison TDM Coordinator, Trent Schultz, spearheaded a “TDM Education Day” at the Wisconsin State Capitol. The delegation included:
- David Salmon, Transportation Coordinator, City of Sun Prairie
- Zia Brucaya, RoundTrip TDM Program Manager, Greater Madison MPO
- Alexander Brown, Planner, SRF Consulting
- Val Hoff, Sales Executive, Commute with Enterprise
- Susan Gaeddert, Commuter Solutions Coordinator, UW-Madison Transportation Services
The group met with legislative offices for Representative Andrew Hysell, Senator Kelda Roys, Representative Francesca Hong, and Representative Lisa Subeck to educate staff about Transportation Demand Management (TDM) initiatives.
ACT applauds the engagement of our members in policy activities and hopes this event inspires others to take action. Trent shared helpful advice for anyone interested in organizing similar events. See below:
How were you able to work with those who could not partake in advocacy? Was it impactful to frame your meetings in a more “educational” light?
“I invited several people to the event including [government employees], and some were concerned about whether it could be construed as lobbying. After sending out the initial invites I met with a WI legislative staffer who provided a briefing from the WI Ethics Commission, detailing when a license to lobby is required and what activities constitute lobbying. I then shared the WI Ethics Commission briefing with everyone I invited to the event – some people felt better about joining, and others still had concerns....While no one from [the WI state government] joined us, we had good representation from municipal, MPO, university, and private sector TDMers.
It was beneficial to frame our event as educational, since we had mostly public sector attendees. During our drop ins, we only spoke specifically about one bill, SB 375 (allowing the City of Milwaukee to use red light cameras), and talked about it from a traffic safety standpoint. Outside of briefly mentioning SB 375, most of the time we spent was talking to staffers about what TDM is and our roles as TDM professionals.”
Would you recommend an event like this for other chapters? Do you have any advice?
“I would certainly recommend a TDM Education Day event to other chapters! My biggest piece of advice would be to coordinate as early as possible with legislative offices. The biennial state budget got finalized around the same time I was trying to coordinate our event with legislative offices – the workload at the Capitol around budget season definitely impacted communication.”
What were some takeaways from the group?
- “Legislative staff from the offices we met with were all very interested to hear about TDM framing within transportation policy and programs. For many this was a first introduction to TDM and all the legislative offices we visited were in support of the broad goals and practices of TDM. They also expressed an interest in being queued into any future legislative action related to TDM.
- The topic of Regional Transit Authorities (RTAs – not currently allowed in WI) was brought up by several legislative staffers as it relates to TDM and a future bill that will be introduced. Staff were appreciative of our perspective on how RTAs are potentially a valuable tool for helping address gaps in transportation services for smaller communities at the edges of urban areas or within worker sheds. This seemed like a topic worth further discussion and elaboration on the potential ways to structure RTAs to help accomplish TDM goals.”