Equity-oriented Criteria for Project Prioritization in Regional Transportation Planning

Abstract

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

The roots of racialized travel behavior

“…Environmental justice policy and civil rights legislation that seek to ensure racial equity in transportation access look to the future but do not assure "restorative justice" or reparations for past harms, which several scholars have argued is a logical goal emanating from Civil Rights legislation (Marcantonio et al 2017;Martens and Golub 2018). Multiple barriers exist to this sort of affirmative action: geographic equity considerations often mean that urban areas-the locations of most historical damage from transportation planning-receive less than a fair share of transportation funding; the composition of regional transportation boards often does not reflect the diversity among their constituents; and racial equity criteria are sparingly used when prioritizing transportation projects (Sciara and Wachs 2007;Sanchez and Wolf 2007;Manaugh, Badami, and El-Geneidy 2015;Martens and Golub 2018;Krapp, Barajas, and Wennink 2021). Some scholars have proposed that a way forward for transportation justice in planning practice is to shift the object of equity from the distribution of mobility or resources to the distribution of accessibility (Pereira, Schwanen, and Banister 2017;Martens 2017;Levine, Grengs, and Merlin 2019).…”