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Title: ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (EJ) THROUGH COMMUNITY IMPACT ASSESSMENT (CIA)
Accession Number: 00939822
Record Type: Component
Availability: Transportation Research Board Business Office 500 Fifth Street, NW Abstract: The Charlotte County-Punta Gorda Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) implemented a Community Impact Assessment (CIA) process to meet environmental justice (EJ) requirements. The MPO defined CIA as "a suite of methodologies to determine transportation priorities and concerns, particularly at the neighborhood level. These methodologies include a range of standard public participation techniques, neighborhood level investigations, and purely technical methods through geographic information systems analysis." CIA is a community-based public participation process that is primarily grounded in neighborhood participation. The term "community" can refer to a demographic community (such as low-income or minority), an organization community (such as church or service club), and a geographic community (such as neighborhood). The use of an overall CIA process to address federal EJ requirements is valid and, in fact, desirable. Based on mapping of low-income individuals through the transportation disadvantaged system and anecdotal information regarding minority residency, groups covered under EJ provisions exist throughout Charlotte County, Florida almost as a function of population density. As part of the CIA process, low-income and minority neighborhoods were identified using census data, property appraiser's data, and transportation disadvantaged client lists. MPO staff met with representatives of each minority and low-income neighborhood, usually at regularly scheduled neighborhood association meetings. During these meetings, EJ neighborhood-defined needs, impacts, and concerns were determined. A qualitative equity evaluation was conducted for each neighborhood separately based on the neighborhood-defined values. Products of the CIA include inventories, analysis, maps, policies, transportation project needs, and project selection criteria. The time investment for the CIA has been analogous to preparing a transportation demand forecast model. However, meaningful improvements to the project programming process are the payoff. As a result of the CIA process, the transportation project needs list was expanded to include the smaller projects (such as sidewalk links and traffic signals) which were identified by neighborhood and other groups. More emphasis was placed on upgrading existing substandard roads rather than multi-laning them. In addition, a major sidewalk project was added to compete against road project for surface transportation program dollars.
Supplemental Notes: The CD-ROM contains the proceedings of the sixth, seventh and eighth conferences. The eighth conference proceedings were published in October 2001.
Language: English
Corporate Authors: Transportation Research Board 500 Fifth Street, NW Authors: Beever, L BEditors: Donnelly, RBennett, GPagination: p. 388-398
Publication Date: 2002
Conference:
Eighth TRB Conference on the Application of Transportation Planning Methods
Location:
Corpus Christi, Texas Features: Figures
(7)
TRT Terms: Identifier Terms: Uncontrolled Terms: Geographic Terms: Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning
Files: TRIS, TRB
Created Date: Mar 25 2003 12:00AM
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