Belo Horizonte: Public Engagement in Urban Transport Strategy
LOGIT used TransparentChoice to help Belo Horizonte engage citizens and stakeholders in shaping a multi-year urban transport strategy. Rodrigo Laboissière and his team brought together NGOs, taxi drivers, disability groups, and the wider community to score 230 projects, delivering a transparent, actionable plan that built public trust.
The Challenge
Belo Horizonte faced the complex task of building a multi-year transport strategy that reflected the needs of over 5 million residents.
With such a large and diverse population, the city needed a process that could capture the voices of citizens, NGOs, taxi drivers, disability groups, and local transport agents. Public engagement was essential, because the strategy would shape daily life for millions of people and needed long-term stability — not something that would change every few years.
At the same time, leaders had to turn broad aspirations into a coherent and realistic plan. Hundreds of potential projects competed for attention, and without a clear way to prioritize, the risk was a fragmented strategy that lacked both focus and public support.
"This was a group that had representatives of many entities from the city — NGOs, companies that discuss mobility, associations. There were all types of people and all different levels of education." 1:22
"When you see it for the first time you think, ‘Oh, it’s impossible to do, I will not do that.’ But during the process it was possible, and we had a very good result." 2:24
"They did not know how to do that implementation, the times for each measure — what should be first and what they could leave for the long term." 4:07
Our Approach
LOGIT, a transport consultancy, partnered with TransparentChoice to create a structured, participatory decision-making process.
They began with cognitive mapping, clustering objectives into clear criteria that formed the AHP model. A large workshop (≈150 participants) used group discussion and voting in TransparentChoice to define the weights. Separately, 132 stakeholders were invited via an online form to evaluate each measure (alternative), ensuring wide input.
This inclusive setup opened the door to diverse stakeholders—NGOs, professional drivers, accessibility advocates, and technical teams. Feasibility was assessed with a second criteria structure (finance, institutional/legal, implementation feasibility), and acceptability was gathered from stakeholders, giving decision-makers a complete picture.
"[We] invited them to vote using TransparentChoice to define the weights of this structure." 6:37
"Each time they had to vote using TransparentChoice, they had to first discuss and decide together how they are going to vote." 7:32
"We have also created a tutorial video explaining how to fill the form and how to evaluate each of the alternative." 9:05
The Results
The process delivered an actionable strategy built on transparency and broad engagement.
Using the Strategic Alignment vs. Feasibility view, the team grouped measures into short-, medium-, and long-term paths. What initially seemed impossible—scoring 230 projects with input from so many groups—was completed successfully, creating robust data and genuine buy-in.
As Rodrigo Laboissière noted, the real achievement was not just the prioritization itself, but the trust it created. Citizens could see their perspectives reflected in the plan, and decision-makers gained confidence that the strategy would hold up politically and socially over the long term.
"they were very very very happy with the final result because they saw that the discussions that we had the opinion of everyone were considered for the final result" 1:06
"the plan and in total alignment with the people that would life with the the effects of these measures and also the people who would will implement this picture these pictures in the next years" 13:22
"the final result for also for us and for the the client was very good and example to be followed by other projects in the future" 14:16
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