Challenge
In 2024, the Florida Department of Transportation significantly revised its speed management methodology, which created a need to train key District staff on setting realistic target speeds based on context classification and project needs. The department also wanted an innovative approach to training that would be interactive, memorable, and engaging for the students over the course of a six- to eight-hour training session.
Solution
Kittelson prepared training materials that included completely new slide templates and graphics, drafted the training schedule and program, provided coaching and support for the instructor on use of the new materials, and helped facilitate part of the training. The FDOT instructor was an experienced speaker who was able to adjust the training on the fly based on the audience interests and experience levels, which allowed Kittelson to develop a sophisticated set of training materials that could be modified quickly and easily.
To address the desire for an innovative and engaging training approach, Kittelson worked with the instructor to develop a tabletop role-playing game called Streets and Speeds, loosely based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons™ role playing game, complete with character sheets, dice-based interactions, tables for outcomes of actions, and tabletop maps.
Participants played characters that represented various people typically involved in an FDOT project (engineers, planners, pedestrians, cyclists, citizens, business owners) with heroic names (and AI-generated character images wearing fantasy-based costumes), character abilities and goals, and special powers like “Engineering Judgment”, “Planner Arcana”, or “Collaboration.” Our team provided trained facilitators to referee the games and developed guides and scripts the referees could use to set the tone of the game and manage the gameplay.
In a separate effort, Kittelson also provided technical support for context-based design, including support for revisions to the FDOT Bicycle Facilities Criteria.
The Outcome
Turning Context-Based Design Training into a Tabletop Role Playing Game
The training received positive feedback from participants, who described it as educational, engaging, and one of the most effective FDOT training experiences they had attended. FDOT has a committed and ongoing effort to create ever-safer roadways in Florida, and safe speeds are a critical component of this effort. This training helped district staff understand the “why” as well as the “how” to match safe speeds to roadways based on context, project need, and context classification.
The students were challenged in a game scenario with limited funding, varying levels of public support and opposition, and often suboptimal roadway configurations. The use of dice introduced “bounded randomness” to the scenarios, ensuring that no two scenarios were ever exactly the same. The community concerns, available funding, and outcomes of key actions were all dice generated based on real-world project experience. This training will help FDOT planners, designers, and engineers understand how to find safer, context-based solutions and apply them under difficult conditions.
