Environmental Justice Assessment of Transportation System: How Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization Examines Equity in the Planning Process

Environmental Justice represents different things to different people. To some, it represents government policy that must be followed in order to be in compliance with the planning process while for others, it represents good planning practice in order to be fair and equitable. The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has made great strides in addressing important environmental justice issues as part of due process and because it is concerned about regional equity in the planning process. This paper details how the environmental justice process has become integrated into the Boston Region MPO planning process and what technical methods are being used to assess the equity of the transportation system at a systems level and on individual projects. The environmental justice process being discussed consists of a four-step approach: (1) Defining who the target populations are and where they are located spatially; (2) Understanding what the environmental justice issues are through an ongoing outreach effort; (3)Examining how changes in the transportation system affect environmental justice populations relative to other populations; (4) Incorporating the analysis into the planning process; (5) Building upon the process described above, the second part of this paper examines the technical methods used in the analysis, focusing on these key points: (6) Explanation of the methods for the most current regional transportation plan; (7) Summary of results and findings for the most current plan; and (8) Issues encountered