Patti.Plisko@kimley-horn.com, Author at PublicCoordinate

A Safe Path to Learning: Transforming the Bakersfield School Corridor

February 3, 2026December 4, 2025 by Patti.Plisko@kimley-horn.com

A Safe Path to Learning: Transforming the Bakersfield School Corridor

Client

City of Bakersfield

Consultant

Kimley-Horn

Location

Bakersfield, California

The Challenge

Bakersfield needed an accessible, scalable way to gather and organize feedback from diverse stakeholders along a complex, school-heavy corridor.

The City of Bakersfield endeavored to transform a three-mile corridor in the southeast part of the city—featuring nine schools and several residential areas—into a multimodal route. Traditionally, the City relied on in-person workshops and pop-up events to gather public input, which limited accessibility and inclusivity. Bakersfield officials also didn’t have a comprehensive method to collect and organize feedback from a broad range of stakeholders, such as school districts, parents, and local organizations.

Our Solution

PublicCoordinate provided an interactive, map-based platform that streamlined community input and enabled real-time feedback from residents and stakeholders.

PublicCoordinate streamlined and enhanced public engagement through its platform, which allowed residents and stakeholders to leave comments directly on an interactive map. Layers were created for each school that reflected specific concerns, such as poor street lighting, traffic congestion and speeding, and inadequate parking. The tool was accessible online for five months, allowing input from those unable to attend in-person events. PublicCoordinate also facilitated real-time feedback during stakeholder meetings as school districts and community groups gathered and shared insights.

The Impact

PublicCoordinate empowered Bakersfield to ground its design process and funding efforts in clear, community-driven priorities.

With PublicCoordinate, the City of Bakersfield was able to access a centralized database of community feedback, which helped the City understand and prioritize traffic safety, bike lanes, and pedestrian infrastructure concerns. This data not only informed the design process but also strengthened the City’s grant applications by demonstrating community-driven planning. Although the project is still in the design phase, its early, community-led engagement has laid a strong foundation for responsive and inclusive urban development.

Dunedin’s Multimodal Transformation to a Connected City

February 3, 2026December 4, 2025 by Patti.Plisko@kimley-horn.com

Dunedin’s Multimodal Transformation to a Connected City

Client

City of Dunedin

Consultant

Kimley-Horn

Location

Dunedin, Florida

The Challenge

Dunedin needed a reliable way to capture location-specific community concerns to guide a comprehensive update to its multimodal transportation master plan.

Dunedin, a city on Florida’s Gulf Coast renowned for its beaches and active community, wanted to update their citywide multimodal transportation master plan to better understand and address the community’s needs. This transportation master plan would need to prioritize safety issues, ensure that public funds were used effectively, and reflect feedback gathered about location-specific concerns.

Our Solution

PublicCoordinate provided a centralized digital platform that enabled Dunedin to efficiently gather and analyze community input for the master plan update.

Kimley-Horn, the City’s trusted consultant, recommended using PublicCoordinate as a digital environment to engage the community and collect valuable feedback. This platform allowed the City to gather community feedback about transportation-related concerns and publicly source recommendations as critical data to present to the City’s elected officials for decision making.

The Impact

Community-driven insights gathered through PublicCoordinate led to more informed recommendations, helping Dunedin advance a safer, more responsive multimodal transportation system.

By leveraging feedback gathered through PublicCoordinate, social media platforms, email, and in-person activities, the City launched a successful community engagement campaign that empowered residents to voice their concerns about specific areas, helping Dunedin collect the data needed to secure additional funding from City officials. Beyond funding, the tool provided insights into safety issues that traditional data often overlooks, such as near misses and everyday hazards experienced by pedestrians and cyclists. This community feedback enabled Kimley-Horn to refine recommendations, including improvements to bike and pedestrian infrastructure, safer crossing, and intersection upgrades. Using PublicCoordinate, Kimley-Horn addressed safety concerns, making Dunedin’s transportation system more responsive and inclusive.

South Palm Canyon Drive Road Reconfiguration Project

February 3, 2026December 4, 2025 by Patti.Plisko@kimley-horn.com

South Palm Canyon Drive Road Reconfiguration Project

Client

City of Palm Springs

Consultant

Kimley-Horn

Location

Palm Springs, California

The Project

To guide the revitalization of a key transportation corridor, the City of Palm Springs launched a community-driven planning and design effort.

The City of Palm Springs, a desert resort city known for its thriving retirement community and cultural scene, needed support to plan, design, and implement pedestrian-friendly infrastructure—such as bike lanes, safety improvements, and visibility enhancements—along an outdated corridor. Their goal was to conduct community outreach to identify and propose a design concept amenable to the community that met their needs, but the project team needed a way to gather responses from the population and identify challenges and opportunities along the corridor.

The Challenge

While in-person community meetings were scheduled to best capture public input, the City also needed to reach all residents through an online engagement tool that could be accessed on the Engage Palm Springs webpage.

Our Solution

PublicCoordinate provided a unified platform for gathering community insights, guiding the development of responsive and data-driven corridor design alternatives.

Using PublicCoordinate, feedback was collected to identify challenges with vehicle mobility, pedestrian infrastructure, and traffic congestion, which supported the creation of new bike lanes. The project team presented multiple context-sensitive design alternatives for bike lane improvements to the public, allowing residents to review existing and proposed corridor conditions and provide feedback. By leveraging engagement through three in-person community meetings and extensive online comments, the team ensured the final design was informed by robust, segment-specific feedback. This enabled the project team to identify specific challenge areas and opportunities, ultimately determining a preferred concept that reflected the community’s priorities and addressed local concerns.

The Impact

The City’s use of PublicCoordinate led to a community-backed design solution that strengthened decision-making and set the project up for successful implementation.

By using PublicCoordinate, the City gained a clear understanding of specific challenge areas along the corridor and utilized the feedback provided by the local community to select the most impactful bike lane design. The South Palm Canyon Drive Road Reconfiguration project has completed the planning and design concept phases, and the City plans to continue using PublicCoordinate and the Engage Palm Springs webpage to communicate project updates to the community as the reconfiguration project progresses through design.

Improving Roadway Safety in Prescott Valley

February 3, 2026December 2, 2025 by Patti.Plisko@kimley-horn.com

Improving Roadway Safety in Prescott Valley

Client

Prescott Valley

Consultant

Kimley-Horn

Location

Prescott Valley, Arizona

The Challenge

Prescott Valley needed a way to capture community-reported safety concerns to strengthen its SS4A-funded roadway safety action plan.

Prescott Valley, a growing community near the Grand Canyon known for its outdoor recreation, received the federal Safe Streets for All (SS4A) grant to improve its transportation infrastructure. With the grant, Prescott Valley’s goal was to develop a comprehensive safety action plan that identified and recommended solutions for roadway crashes in its urban and rural areas. While there was existing data for fatal and serious injury crashes, there needed to be a method to capture community-reported safety concerns not typically reflected in crash report statistics.

Our Solution

PublicCoordinate enabled Prescott Valley to gather resident-reported crash locations and safety concerns directly and efficiently.

Kimley-Horn, Prescott Valley’s safety action plan consultant, leveraged PublicCoordinate to collect feedback and pinpoint additional crash locations, near-misses, and other roadway–related safety concerns directly from residents.

The Impact

Community insights gathered through PublicCoordinate helped Prescott Valley prioritize safety improvements and strengthen planning across future transportation projects.

By using PublicCoordinate, the team understood the additional safety concerns of the community. These insights provided elected officials with a clear visual representation of where safety enhancements should be prioritized. The success of this approach led to Prescott Valley adopting PublicCoordinate in other transportation–related infrastructure projects, enhancing transportation safety planning throughout the community.

City Park Reimagined: Portsmouth Master Plan

February 3, 2026December 2, 2025 by Patti.Plisko@kimley-horn.com

City Park Reimagined: Portsmouth Master Plan

Client

City of Portsmouth

Consultant

Kimley-Horn

Location

Portsmouth, Virginia

The Challenge

An underused golf course occupying most of City Park prompted Portsmouth to rethink how its 90-acre waterfront space could better serve the community.

City Park in Portsmouth, Virginia, is an urban waterfront park spanning more than 90 acres. While certain features, like the picnic areas and playground, habitually engage community members, the golf course wasn’t used as much and didn’t reflect the recreational needs of the Portsmouth community. Since the golf course takes up a majority of City Park’s blueprint, the City of Portsmouth wanted to reimagine the park through a master planning process to better serve its 100,000 residents and transform the space into a more inclusive community asset.

Our Solution

PublicCoordinate empowered Portsmouth to gather interactive, location-specific community input and share design alternatives for the future of City Park.

To support the City’s vision, PublicCoordinate was used in the early phases of the project to gather community input. The community engagement platform allowed residents to virtually interact with aerial map imagery and leave location-specific feedback, which was especially valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic. During a later phase, the team integrated concept drawings into the platform, allowing the City to present project alternatives to the public and give them a voice in the future of City Park.

The Impact

Community-driven insights reshaped City Park’s future, replacing the unused golf course with vibrant spaces that better reflect local needs and bring residents together.

PublicCoordinate played a key role in shaping the new vision of City Park by enabling accessible and interactive community input. Instead of the golf course, the public identified park concepts with the greatest potential for their community, like spaces for families to gather, eat, and play—prioritizing outcomes that promoted group activities that brought the community together. The insights that were gathered during this process not only informed the park design and construction outcomes for the City, but it gave the community a say in what the future of their park would look like—creating a more meaningful space that directly addresses community needs.