Toward the Development of a Unified Process and Methodology Guide for Environmental Justice Analysis in Planning and Programming

Federal Environmental Justice directives require transportation agencies responsible for planning and programming federal funds, including state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), to identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental impacts on minority and low-income populations. Despite issuance of federal and state guidance and training programs, many MPOs nationwide continue to seek clarity on effective environmental justice (EJ) approaches and procedural considerations. The South Central Pennsylvania Unified EJ Process and Methodology study was a year-long effort undertaken by a consortium of MPOs in Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) District 8 to identify a unified and replicable approach to implementing EJ in transportation planning. PennDOT, Federal Highway Administration PA Division, and Federal Transit Administration Region III provided technical assistance and support to the effort. The consortium engaged a technical assistance consultant to facilitate a collaborative process to identify a process framework, a set of analytical methodologies, and effective strategies for advancing EJ in the regional transportation planning process. The study demonstrated a model for convening regional, state, and federal partners to reach consensus around an effective EJ process and methodology. This paper provides an overview of the study process, findings related to the concerns of the participating MPOs, and a brief description of the recommended analytical approaches. The paper discusses lessons learned during the course of the study and considers additional work required to further enhance the EJ process.

An Item Response Theory Model of Inter-Regional Collaboration for Transportation Planning in the United States

Regional governments and regional intergovernmental organizations play an increasingly important role in land use and transportation planning in many countries. In the U.S., regional organizations such as metropolitan planning organizations provide regional forums and institutions to coordinate actions of local government necessary to overcome collective action problems that result from the fragmentation of local authority. Their regional scope allows them to directly address collaboration problems or broker collaborative arrangements among local governments within their boundaries. Nevertheless, the scale of regional problems often extends beyond the boundaries of these regional entities. Thus, collaboration across regional governance organizations is necessary to address problems that have multi-regional impacts, such as large transportation projects. Extant research generally measures regional collaboration based on counts of collaboration actions undertaken, but this does not account for the fact that some are symbolic, while others require resources and commitment. Drawing insights from the institutional collective action framework, we advance an explanation for how regional organizations overcome collaboration risks to participate in collaborative solutions to regional and multi-regional problems. The analysis employs a unique national survey of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and adds a novel application of item response theory (IRT) to capture differences in risk or difficulty among collaborative actions. The IRT results offer support for our ICA-based explanation of collaboration commitments. The implications of the findings for theory development and empirical study of RIGOs are discussed in conclusion.

Equity-oriented Criteria for Project Prioritization in Regional Transportation Planning

Transportation inequities, consequences of decades of auto-oriented planning alongside discriminatory land-use and transportation planning and policy decisions resulting from structural racism, severely impact opportunities for people of color and other marginalized populations. While a growing body of work has examined inequities with respect to long-range transportation planning, less research examines how equity is incorporated in short-term planning processes via the Transportation Improvement Program. This research reviewed how the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) that serve the 40 largest US urbanized areas used equity-based criteria for transportation project prioritization in regional planning. Just over half deployed at least one equity criterion for allocating transportation funds, which fell into one of six categories with varying degrees of complexity and potential for impact. While most MPOs included equity in their prioritization criteria, the methods could be improved to better align with more complete definitions of transportation equity, focusing on how targeted groups are defined, more comprehensive methods for equity evaluation, and an increase in the weight that equity is given in prioritization. MPOs and other agencies implementing transportation projects should adopt a justice-oriented framework for project prioritization that ensures that projects first affirmatively remedy historical inequities and work with affected communities to adopt appropriate and meaningful solutions

Equity-Oriented Criteria for Project Prioritization in Regional Transportation Planning

Transportation inequities, the consequences of decades of auto-oriented planning alongside discriminatory land-use and transportation planning and policy decisions resulting from structural racism, severely limit opportunities for people of color and other marginalized populations. While a growing body of work has examined inequities with respect to long-range transportation planning, less research examines how equity is incorporated in short-term planning processes via the Transportation Improvement Program. This research reviewed how the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) that serve the 40 largest U.S. urbanized areas used equity-based criteria for transportation project prioritization in regional planning. Just over half deployed at least one equity criterion for allocating transportation funds, which fell into one of six categories with varying degrees of complexity and potential for impact. While most MPOs included equity in their prioritization criteria, the methods could be improved to align better with more complete definitions of transportation equity, focusing on how targeted groups are defined, more comprehensive methods for equity evaluation, and an increase in the weight that equity is given in prioritization. MPOs and other agencies implementing transportation projects should adopt a justice-oriented framework for project prioritization that ensures that projects first affirmatively remedy historical inequities and work with affected communities to adopt appropriate and meaningful solutions.

Climate Planning and Implementation in Metropolitan Transportation Governance

Even with expected changes in fuel, transportation will produce significant greenhouse gas emissions long into the future. We conduct the first evaluation of the performance of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in planning and implementing strategies for emission reduction. By coding regional transportation plans in three U.S. states, we find a reasonably high level of plan conformance: MPOs that express commitment to climate change mitigation channel more funding toward projects that reduce emissions. However, most MPOs have not started planning to address climate change, leading us to conclude that current practice has not redirected MPOs’ traditional emphasis on automobile-based transportation.

Planning for Social Equity and Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles, and the internet of things are rapidly advancing. Testing of autonomous vehicles is being undertaken in 24 cities across the U.S.A., and an additional 74 cities worldwide ( 1). The introduction and expansion of these new modes of transport and supporting technologies will have vast implications for social equity, depending on planning practices and policymaking. This paper explores how 20 metropolitan planning organizations prepare for emerging technologies and consider their implications for equity. A qualitative content analysis of Regional Transportation Plans (RTPs) was conducted looking for evidence of these efforts. It found that 80% of plans included planning for social equity beyond the current environmental justice requirements, 70% mentioned emerging technologies, and 20% considered the equity implications of those technologies. The results showed promising practices from a number of areas, with the Southern California Association of Governments leading the way in addressing both equity and emerging technology planning; and the RTP of Madison, WI providing the best consideration of the equity implications of emerging technologies.

State-of-the-Practice in Connecting and Coordinating Transportation and Land Use Planning in the U.S.A.

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) providing funding for local land use planning is part of a growing trend which has so far received very little attention. This study surveyed a stratified sample of 30 U.S. MPOs weighted toward larger metropolitan areas. Of the 30 MPOs, about half were funding smart growth-oriented local land use planning through transportation and land use connection (TLC) programs. From them, 10 MPOs with TLC programs were selected and written up as case studies. Across the case studies it was found that the funding and support provided differs greatly by region. The ultimate goal of these programs was similar, however—to reduce suburban sprawl and the associated need for highway building, and instead to create more livable, sustainable, walkable, bikeable, and transit-accessible communities within the region. These gaols were achieved by promoting infill and development in and around urban centers, and encouraging concentration of activity around transit stations. With the exception of one program, funding portfolios have grown year by year. While project funding selection criteria differ across MPOs, how well they align with the region’s transportation plan seems to be of paramount importance.

Modeling Construction Project-Induced Freight Reliability for South Carolina’s Interstate System

This paper focuses on the freight component of the federal rulemaking for performance management that assesses freight travel time reliability on the interstate system. As this is the first time agencies (departments of transportations and metropolitan planning organizations) have been tasked with establishing targets for freight reliability (and other measures), the paper proposes a modeling approach to systematically account for the traffic and roadway characteristics and predict possible changes in the truck travel time reliability (TTTR) ratio due to construction projects. Although different trendlines can be utilized to provide a range of TTTR indices for future years, the subjective nature of predicting a target value in a future year demands a more systematic approach to capturing the effect of construction projects on the variability of the TTTR ratio. This study uses South Carolina’s interstate system to develop the two generalized linear models (GLMs) and a Bayesian GLM. Length and type of traffic message channel, type of construction project, area type, average annual daily traffic, and number of lanes were found to be among the significant predictors associated with a change in the TTTR ratio as a result of construction activity. This paper discusses the association of these causal factors and their influence on freight reliability. Owing to the contemporary nature of TTTR, there is no existing research predicting this particular type of freight reliability; as such, this work is thought to be relevant and beneficial for transportation engineers, planners and forecasters.