Evaluating the environmental justice impacts of transportation improvement projects in the US

This paper considers the environmental justice implications of transportation plans and policies in the US. Despite several administrative orders and federal mandates, few specific guidelines exist for assessing the disproportionate effects of transportation projects and implementing environmental justice principles in the transportation planning process. The paper develops a set of indices to measure the environmental justice impacts of transportation projects; and applies these to evaluate proposed capacity improvement projects in Volusia County, Florida. The indices developed serve as preliminary indicators that address the key research dimensions of environmental justice, meet the requirements of federal mandates that enforce principles of environmental justice, and are formulated on the basis of census data and tools available in geographic information systems software.