Environmental Justice in Transportation Planning

Abstract Environmental justice is a public policy goal of ensuring that the adverse human health or environmental effects of government activities do not fall disproportionately upon minority populations or low-income populations. This article presents a practical approach to measure the extent to which the air quality or noise consequences of a transportation system change would disproportionately affect those populations. The approach applies a geographic information system (GIS) to blend U.S. Census data with the results from emission and dispersion models of vehicle-generated pollutants, and from noise propagation models. Air pollution and noise contours can thus be overlaid upon data representing race and income levels, to discern whether disproportionate effects would occur.

[1]  J. Schwartz,et al.  Is Daily Mortality Associated Specifically with Fine Particles? , 1996, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

[2]  Toshihiro Arai,et al.  An analysis of traffic noise propagation around main roads in Tokyo , 1989 .

[3]  B Hokanson,et al.  MEASURES OF NOISE DAMAGE COSTS ATTRIBUTABLE TO MOTOR VEHICLE TRAVEL , 1981 .

[4]  Transportation Emissions and Environmental Health: An Evaluatory Planning Methodology , 1976 .

[5]  J Schwartz,et al.  Increased mortality in Philadelphia associated with daily air pollution concentrations. , 1992, The American review of respiratory disease.

[6]  P. F. Adams,et al.  Current estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, 1991. , 1989, Vital and health statistics. Series 10, Data from the National Health Survey.

[7]  D. Vliet,et al.  A model of air pollution from road traffic, based on the characteristics of interrupted flow and junction control: Part I — model description , 1992 .

[8]  M. Baucus.  Transportation Research Board , 1982 .

[9]  Fred L. Mannering,et al.  ANALYSIS OF FINE PARTICULATE MATTER NEAR URBAN ROADWAYS , 1993 .

[10]  Kenneth A. Small,et al.  ON THE COSTS OF AIR POLLUTION FROM MOTOR VEHICLES. IN: URBAN TRANSPORT , 1995 .

[11]  J. Feldman,et al.  Health, United States, 1993 , 1994 .

[12]  I D Williams,et al.  Road traffic nuisance in residential and commercial areas. , 1995, The Science of the total environment.

[13]  L. Llewellyn.  The Social Cost of Urban Transportation , 1981 .

[14]  H. Nitta,et al.  Respiratory health associated with exposure to automobile exhaust. II. Personal NO2 exposure levels according to distance from the roadside. , 1997, Journal of exposure analysis and environmental epidemiology.

[15]  P. E. Benson.  CALINE4 - A DISPERSION MODEL FOR PREDICTING AIR POLLUTANT CONCENTRATIONS NEAR ROADWAYS. FINAL REPORT , 1984 .