Environmental justice embraces the fundamental human desire for fairness and equity.  Because development and implementation of transportation projects can create potentially beneficial and adverse impacts on the communities and people they affect, they require careful consideration and incorporation of environmental justice from the onset.

With the passage of Executive Order 12898 in 1994, environmental justice has taken on greater significance in the scope of transportation planning. The U.S. DOT and state and local agencies have worked to identify appropriate processes, techniques, and effective practices for making sound environmental justice assessments and for considering their results in transportation decisions.

The objective of this research was to identify and develop processes, procedures, and techniques for integrating environmental justice considerations into transportation systems planning, priority programming, project development, and decision making at the statewide, metropolitan, and local levels. Presented as a guidebook, the research results will improve the analytical capabilities of states, MPOs, and their planning partners. The guidance builds on existing impact assessment methods and presents new techniques that improve on current practice. These methods are organized and presented to guide practitioners in assessing environmental justice issues within specific application categories (e.g., air quality, safety, transportation user effects, and economic development). It is intended to advance current knowledge, provide practical guidance and qualitative and quantitative assessment tools, and the share state-of-the-art methods for addressing environmental justice in transportation.

The guidebook is designed to enhance understanding and to facilitate consideration and incorporation of environmental justice into all elements of the transportation planning process, from long-range transportation systems planning through priority programming, project development, and policy decisions. It offers practitioners an analytical framework to facilitate comprehensive assessments of a proposed transportation project’s impacts on affected populations and communities.

This step-by-step and practical guide provides technical assistance, from selecting appropriate methods of analysis to calculating effects on air and water quality, drainage, and safety. It also addresses impacts of hazardous materials on affected persons residing in a given locale. The conclusion of each chapter provides valuable resources and references to supplement the reader’s knowledge.

This guidebook should be of particular interest to planning practitioners in state departments of transportation (DOTs), metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and local transportation planners, as well as other practitioners concerned with planning, programming, and implementing transportation projects.  The guidebook will also be beneficial as an educational resource on the concepts, tools, and procedures currently employed for assessing environmental justice issues in the context of transportation planning decisions.

366 pp. 62 figures, 38 tables, glossary, perfect binding.

ISBN #0-309-08798-8

NOTE: This document is not distributed by the Public Policy Center. It is available as National Cooperative Research Program (NCHRP) Report 532 for $34.00 from the Transportation Research Board, Business Office, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. It also can be ordered through the Internet at: http://www.national-academies.org/trb/bookstore