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Transportation Planning 

Stakeholder Collaboration

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Bridging transit expertise with successful stakeholder collaboration

Movitas is a specialized solo consultancy focused on transportation policy and planner-led engagement for both government and private-sector clients. Meg Merritt founded the firm in 2020 to serve as independent advisor to project managers seeking expert support in stakeholder management and formal project presentations. Clients rely on Meg to translate complex technical concepts into clear, accessible graphics and language that help project teams align around shared goals and achieve win-win solutions.

About

ABOUT

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Meg Merritt

Meg brings 20 years of experience managing complex projects that deliver transit and emerging mobility solutions to communities. With a background as both a transit planner and a Professor of Planning, she excels at the art of storytelling to garner project support. She specializes in planner-led engagement with a particular talent for explaining engineering concepts to the public and equally, helping technical practitioners reach solutions that reflect community priorities. Her project management style emphasizes building rapport, active listening, consensus-building, and leveraging the unique strengths of multidisciplinary teams.

 

Meg was recently nominated to the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Oversight and Project Selection (TOPS) Committee. She was named to Mass Transit Magazine’s “40 Under 40” in 2020 and has contributed thought leadership to CityLab and The New York Times.

SERVICES
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Policy Analysis

We help public and private partners to better understand the policy landscape in which they are trying to implement change. Movitas offers insights on "how we got here" to inform "how to get there" with clear guidance on federal, state, and local regulations. 
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Stakeholder Negotiations

All transportation projects involve trade-offs. We work with partners to tell the story of technically feasible options while seeking to understand stakeholders’ perspectives. Movitas offers facilitated technical workshops as well as smaller group meetings that aim to find common-ground solutions.
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Visioning & Storytelling

We provide transportation mapping and graphics as well as framing and context-setting for presentations. We can help translate technical and engineering documents to illustrative graphics to help communicate project accuracy in a way that people understand. Before a project becomes reality, it’s built one slide at a time. This is where Movitas excels: helping bring projects from idea to impact.

PROJECTS

A representative sample of projects is listed below.

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Project Connect

Client: Austin Transit Partnership & Capital Metro
Austin, TX | 2017 -2023

Meg led working group stakeholder outreach for the Blue Line and Orange Line light rail projects during the early NEPA phase. She worked with the larger public outreach team to manage some of the corridor’s most active stakeholders. She collaborated with technical team members to develop presentations that sought to communicate technical information in a public-ready format.

 

Additionally, she helped the engineering team make decisions on mitigation factors that would help meet the needs of community requests. While at Nelson\Nygaard, Meg led stakeholder outreach for early-stage planning on the Orange Line light rail corridor as well as led a team of Nelson\Nygaard practitioners in crafting the locally preferred alternative (LPA) system plan that went to the public for a successful $7.1 billion referendum. 

Image Courtesy of Capital Metro

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Equitable Transit Oriented Development (ETOD)

Client: Capital Metro
Austin, TX | 2021 - 2022

CapMetro's ETOD Study (in partnership with the City of Austin and the Austin Transit Partnership) aims to implement future transportation investments that preserve existing communities and enhance their access to economic opportunity. The study recommends community-centered policies and strategies for stations planned under Project Connect, a voter-approved transit expansion plan that includes a zero-emissions fleet, new rail system and an expanded bus system with more routes. 

 

HR&A Associates and Nelson\Nygaard teamed with Movitas to establish a community outreach framework that increased participation within priority populations. Movitas supported the team by establishing an overall outreach strategy at the project start and building a focus group channel for deeper community conversations.  Meg's collaboration with project managers proved central to the success of the outreach approach. Together, CMTA and the consultant outreach team ensured that conversations with disadvantaged groups were tailored to geographic and access realities. 

Image Courtesy of Capital Metro

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Early-stage Transportation Planning for the Austin Convention Center Redevelopment

Client: City of Austin
Austin, TX | 2024

The City of Austin is currently in the design phase for the redevelopment and expansion of the Austin Convention Center (ACCX) located in Downtown Austin. This transformative project involves the demolition and reconstruction of the existing facility to significantly increase its rentable square footage. During the early design concept phase (January 2024 – June 2024), Movitas produced a report that captures external transportation projects relevant to the Convention Center site. This report served as a critical reference for architects during the concept design process, offering a “snapshot in time” of ongoing mobility initiatives and highlighting the coordination among various stakeholders working to advance concurrent infrastructure improvements.

Report cover created by Movitas Mobility

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CapMetro Strategic Plan 2030

Client: Capital  Metro
Austin, TX | 2025

Every transit agency regularly goes through the exercise of planning for the organization it aims to be.  For Capital Metro, a post-pandemic recovery era comes with opportunity to build on agency strengths and re-evaluate approach to weaknesses.

Movitas partnered with Foursquare ITP and Infrastrategies to create a new Strategic Plan that sets the agency’s direction and outlines clear steps to reach its goals. Movitas interviewed executive staff and external stakeholders and provided insights and writing for the plan recommendations. The final report can be found online here

Image courtesy of Capital Metro

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Capital Metro Transit Plan 2035

Client: Capital  Metro
Austin, TX | 2024 - 2025

Transit Plan 2035 is CapMetro’s comprehensive vision for the future of its bus, rail, paratransit, and Pickup services over the next ten years. Managed by the CapMetro Planning team, HNTB partnered with Meg to facilitate discussions with internal stakeholders—including staff, frontline employees, executive leadership, and the CapMetro Board. These focus groups have provided valuable insights that not only helped fill data gaps but also supported the technical team in prioritizing service changes.

Image courtesy of Capital Metro

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Capital Metro Red Line Trail Study

Client: Capital  Metro
Austin, TX | 2023

The goal of the Red Line Trail Study - a partnership between City of Austin Public Works Department and Capital Metro - was to identify a feasible and safe off-street alignment for Red Line Trail with recommendations for near-, mid-, and long-term implementation. The study resulted in a context-sensitive corridor plan based on Federal Railroad Administration and Rails with Trails best practices such as: identifying an off-street alignment for Red Line Trail, following the Capital Metro Red Line MetroRail route, and providing connections to stations.

 

Meg supported Toole Design Group and AECOM by designing and facilitating focus groups. In collaboration with CMTA staff, Meg created a prompt for conversations with CMTA divisions before seeking participation from the general public. Meg led the first round of focus groups which helped daylight information gaps not previously understood by the technical team. The exercise delivered input on specific policy and technical parameters such as R.O.W. setbacks in various contexts, drainage best practices, and coordination with other city agencies.

Image courtesy of Austin Monitor

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EMAIL

megmerritt <AT> movitasmobility.com

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CONTACT

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Contact

Movitas Mobility, LLC | Austin, TX 78704

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