Not Just for EJ Anymore? May 2009 . TRB National Transportation Planning Applications Conference

1. Not Just for EJ Anymore?May 2009 . TRB National Transportation Planning Applications Conference Bruce Kaplan Central Transportation Planning Staff

2. Environmental Justice Legislation • Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Executive Order 12898 (1994) Identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority and low-income populations

3. Travel Forecasting – The Forgotten Tool for EJ Analysis • EJ focus is often on: • Planning process of enfranchisement, outreach, goal setting, definitions, needs assessment • Public participation • Current equity, not future equity • Identifying communities of concern • Present-day problems and empirical data • The magic of GIS overlays • Evaluation of future projects not usually done

4. Benefit-vs.-Burden Evaluation of Future Projects • Few MPOs appear to have used future-year regional model results for EJ evaluation • Mostly done at the level of the whole Regional Transportation Plan, not for individual projects • Yet there is a growing body of “how-to” literature • NCHRP 8-36(11) (2002) • NCHRP 532 (2004) • EJ and Transportation Toolkit – www.brejtp.com

5. Atlanta Baltimore Bay Area (MTC) Boston Chicago Columbus, OH Hartford Greater LA (SCAG) Milwaukee Seattle San Antonio Washington, DC Who Has Done It at Least Once?

6. Recent Application for Boston Region MPO – Green Line Extension

7. Step 1: Locating Residential Target Populations in the Study Area • Identify Cambridge, Medford, and Somerville Transportation Analysis Zones (TAZs) that are low income or minority: • Low income – Median household income at or below 80% of the 2000 MPO median ($44,640) • Minority – Minority population share greater than the 2000 MPO average (21.4%)

8. Performance Measures • Accessibility to Jobs and Services • Within a 20-minute Auto or 40-minute Transit trip (unweighted travel times) : • Basic, retail, and service employment • Health care and higher education • Averaged by number of TAZs in each category • Average unweighted travel times to accessible jobs and services

9. Performance Measures • Mobility, Congestion, and Environmental • Average Highway and Transit door-to-door unweighted travel times for trips Produced in and Attracted to TAZ • Vehicle-Miles Traveled per square mile • CO emissions per square mile

10. Scenarios Studied 2030 No-Build Scenario Preferred Alternative for 2030 from Regional Transportation Plan without Green Line Extension Representative 2030 Build Scenario 2030 No-Build Scenario with D Branch extended to Mystic Valley Parkway (with 300 parking spaces) and E Branch extended to Union Square

11. Transit Accessibility to Jobs Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

12. Highway Accessibility to Jobs Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

13. Transit Accessibility to Services Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

14. Highway Accessibility to Services Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

15. Changes in Mobility Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

16. Changes in Congestionand Air Quality Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

17. Step 1 Again, but for Disability Identify Disability Population TAZs in Cambridge, Medford, and Somerville: TAZs in which the percentage of population with a disability (persons over 5 yrs. old reporting themselves as having a disability) is greater than the eastern Massachusetts average (17.6%).

18. Disability TAZs

19. Transit Accessibility to Jobs Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

20. Highway Accessibility to Jobs Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

21. Transit Accessibility to Services Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

22. Highway Accessibility to Services Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

23. Changes in Mobility Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

24. Changes in Congestionand Air Quality Using Unweighted Total Travel Times

25. Summary of Findings • In all cases measured, Green Line Extension will benefit Environmental Justice and Disability Population TAZs • In most cases measured, benefits are greater for the Environmental Justice and Disability Population TAZs than for other TAZs

26. Methodological Issues/Problems Specific to the CTPS Model • Use of current target population geography and definitions for future assessment (for example, ethnicity stays constant) • Geographic mismatch between census geography and TAZs • Health care = hospital beds • Income not a mode choice parameter • Mismatch between employment needs of low-income populations and “accessible” jobs • Room for expansion of air quality analysis

27. General Methodological Issues/Problems • Severe demographic uncertainty, especially at TAZ level • Getting around using current-year definitions and geography for future-year work • Defining “Disabled” and/or other “non-EJ” communities of concern • Difficulty associated with Project/Study Area level vs. RTP level • Weighted time vs. unweighted time vs. impedance • Benefit/Burden threshold

28. Further Thoughts More dialogue needed between modelers and others involved in EJ process/analysis • Others unaware of how model outputs can be used for evaluation and assessment • Modeling community needs to take proactive stance

29. Further Thoughts • Room for methodological refinement • Room for expansion of slate of performance measures • When model-related work is done for EJ or other “community” analysis, make sure it sees the light of day and is incorporated into documents

30. ContactInformation Bruce Kaplan bkaplan@ctps.org Principal Transportation Planner Ian Harrington ianh@ctps.org Chief Transportation Planner Scott Peterson scottp@ctps.org Manager of Transportation Systems Analysis Central Transportation Planning Staff to the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization www.bostonmpo.org