Context Sensitive Solutions

“A collaborative, interdisciplinary approach that involves all stakeholders to provide a transportation facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic, historic, and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and mobility.”

- Federal Lands Highway

Criteria

Respect All Stakeholders

Provide Safe Passage

Minimize Impacts to Existing Interdisciplinary Design Teams

Community Engagement

Vision, Purpose, and Need

Clear Decision Making

Deliver a Quality Solution

Context Sensitive Solutions

Considerations

Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) may come in a wide variety of formats, from helping guide the engagement between a Department of Transportation (DOT) and a community, to wildlife considerations, to ‘laying lightly on the land’, and everything in between. Most DOTs have their own definition of what CSS may look like (or directly copy from the Federal Lands Highway), and a well-engaged community member should seek out their local and regional DOT’s definitions of CSS.

The Federal Lands Highway’s (FLH) definition was used in this inquiry because it is wellencompassing and lays out a series of eight criteria. This allows the FLH’s understanding of CSS to be easily followed by a community member who may be unfamiliar with roadway design.

The CSS criteria listed by the FLH and this inquiry should be viewed as guiding considerations, not as design regulations. Every project, ecosystem, and community deserves individualized consideration. However, the following statements can and should be adapted as a means of working towards a wonderful transportation project!