Equity in Transportation Planning

This is our first attempt to highlight the actions of many of our members and put together a set of useful resources.  We expect to add more in the coming weeks and always welcome recommendations.  We do not try to link to every resource, but rather curate a set of resources that provide perspective and will be most useful to our members.  If you have recommendations for this list, please share them.

• Equity Glossary (for Regional Leadership Forum discussion)

• SCAG: SCAG has resources on the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Awareness webpage, including:
  • Racial Equity Early Action Plan Report (2021)
  • Racial Equity: Baseline Conditions Report (Draft);
  •  Developing an Inclusive Economic Recovery Strategy (Slide Deck, 2021).
  • Staff Memo and Process Overview (2021)

• LA Metro: Equity and Race webpage:
  • Board Report; Presentation Overview (LA Metro, 2018)
• SACOG: Two key documents:
  • Progress Report (2021) Tracks changes across important indicators (2021)
  • Racial Equity Audit. Reviews policies, staffing and board make up (Oct. 2020)
  • Our Path Forward: The Prosperity Strategy. Economic priorities for a more prosperous, equitable and resilient region.
• MTC-ABAG: Equity Platform (2020); (TIP) Investment Analysis: Using equity lens to review transportation investments (2021)
• SJCOG: Displacement Risk Assessment (2022)
• Solano Transportation Authority: Equity Guiding Principles (2019)
• SANDAG:  Regional Social Equity Analysis; Commitment to Equity (2021)
• Alameda County Transportation Commission, Social Equity in ACTC Plans, Programs, and Funding (2020)
• Metropolitan Planning Council (Chicago). Prioritizing transportation investments with an equity lens. (2020). Reviews 40 programs nationwide; includes recommendations.
• South Bay Cities Council of Governments: Police discipline Survey Questions (2020)

Getting Started

• League of California Cities: Advancing Equity Webinar Series.
• National League of Cities:  Race Equity And Leadership Program (REAL).
  • Advancing Racial Equity in Your City.  (Six steps for improving outcomes for all residents.)
  • Responding to Racial Tension. (Provides important contextual and tactical information to respond effectively).
  • Repository of City Racial Equity Policies and Decisions. (Examples of policy and budgetary changes to prioritize racial equity).
  • Racial Equity Resolution. (A template and talking points that explain why pursuing equity is good for public agencies)
• Local and Regional Government Alliance for Racial Equity.  The Tools and Resources include a how to manual for racial equity action plans, a toolkit to “Operationalize Equity,” and a white paper outlining best practices to advance racial equity in contracting and procurement.  Also worth a look are the communications tools.

State Policies

• California Transportation Commission: Racial Equity Statement
• California Department of Transportation: Race and Equity Program (2020)
• California Environmental Protection Agency: Environmental Justice Program.
• Strategic Growth Council: Governing for Racial Equity: California’s Capitol Collaborative on Race and Equity.

Historical Perspective

• Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America. PBS Documentary.  How the automobile brought new mobility for African Americans but also exposed them to discrimination and violence.
• L.A.’s freeways might be the most racist monuments in California. Fleischer, M. Los Angeles Times (2020).
• Exploring the Legacy of Redlining via a New Documentary about Boyle Heights. Sulaiman, S. Streetsblog Los Angeles (2015, October 2).

Transportation Planning

• We Can Get There From Here: New Perspectives on Transportation Equity. National Center for Sustainable Transportation. (2016). Summarizes academic research and transportation planning practice to provide a shared foundation for designing equitable transportation systems.
• Mobility Equity Framework: Making Transportation Work for People. Greenlining Institute. (2018) A step-by-step guide to a more community-centered transportation planning process. It includes specific metrics to help evaluate mobility from an equity and community-centered perspective, as well as ideas for how to develop a people-based transportation planning process.
• Environmental Justice Guidance Under the National Environmental Policy Act. Council on Environmental Quality. 1997.  An overview of how Environmental justice issues may arise in the NEPA process.
• An Environmental Justice Strategy for Urban Transportation | Reimagine! Mann, E. (2005).  Equity demands a mass movement of funds from the highway and rail interests to bus systems; and from suburban commuters, corporate developers, and rail contractors to the urban working class of color. Such a transformation will not happen until a mass movement of the transit-dependent users is built from the bottom up.
• Advancing Social Equity Analysis in Transportation with the Concept of Accessibility. Michigan Population Studies Center. (2015).  Contends that replacing mobility-based evaluation frameworks with accessibility-based ones is a better way to detect inequitable outcomes
• Confronting Inequality in Metropolitan Regions: Realizing the Promise of Civil Rights and Environmental Justice in Metropolitan Transportation Planning. Marcantonio, R. A., Golub, A., Karner, A., & Nelson, L. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 44(4), 1017. (2017). This article contends that stronger guidance requiring robust equity analyses for regional plans has the potential to result in better planning and outcomes for metropolitan regions.

Transit and TOD

• Exploring Bicycle and Public Transit Use by Low-Income Latino Immigrants: A Mixed-Methods Study in the San Francisco Bay Area. Barajas, J. M., Chatman, D. G., & Agrawal, A. W. Mineta Transportation Institute. (2016). Compares the travel patterns of low-income immigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area with that of other groups and investigates the barriers to taking transit and bicycling. (Presented at 2017 Regional Leadership Forum)
• Who Wins and Who Loses? How Gentrification Caused by Public Transportation is Felt Differently Across Race. Shipman, R. Politics Summer Fellows. (2018).
• Public Transportation’s Demographic Divide. Maciag, M. Governing. (2014, February 25).
• Making the Connection: Transit-Oriented Development and Jobs. Good Jobs First. Grady, S., & LeRoy, G. (2006).  Examines 25 TOD projects to identify practices to serve working families by providing affordable housing and/or better access to jobs.
• Promoting Opportunity through Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (eTOD): Barriers to Success and Best Practices for Implementation. Hersey, J. K., & Spotts, M. A. Enterprise Community Partners. (2015).  Identifies barriers that inhibit low- and moderate-income families’ ability to find housing in communities with access to robust, multi-modal transportation options. Includes recommendations and best practices.
• Maintaining Diversity In America’s Transit-Rich Neighborhoods: Tools for Equitable Neighborhood Change. Pollack, S., Bluestone, B., & Billingham, C. Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. (2010). Explores the issues of gentrification and displacement in transit-rich neighborhoods to propose policy tools that could be used to shape equitable neighborhood change in both old and new TRNs.
• Op-Ed: Transit-oriented development? More like transit rider displacement. Rosenthal, T. J. Los Angeles Times. (2018, February 20).

Active Transportation

• Active Transportation and Perceptions of Safety: A Case Study of a Regional Trail and a Transit Corridor in Salt Lake City, Utah. García, I., & Khan, S. The Journal of Planning Practice & Education. (2018). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the connection between active transportation and perceptions of safety by employing surveys and focus groups with residents.
•  ‘Safe Streets’ Are Not Safe for Black Lives. Thomas, D. Bloomberg.Com. (2020, June 8).
• Poor and black “invisible cyclists” need to be part of post-pandemic transport planning too. Agyeman, J.The Conversation. (2020, May 27).
• Fear: A Silent Barrier to Bicycling in Black and Brown Communities. Brown, C. ITE Journal. (2016, September). Improved safety of Black and Hispanic cyclists can improve the degree of criminal activity in a community.
• Equity in Bike Share Research. Transportation Research and Education Center. (2019). TREC-affiliated researchers have established Portland State University as a center for understanding how to make bike share more equitable.
• Pedestrians Dying at Disproportionate Rates in America’s Poorer Neighborhoods. Maciag, M.Governing.com. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
• Can Vision Zero Work in a Racist Society? By Tamika Butler.  Medium (2018, October 23). For Vision Zero to succeed, there must be an explicit acknowledgment that racial bias in policing and planning is a problem. People of color know that race is a major factor in our safety and in our ability to succeed as we move about our cities. Any Vision Zero strategy that fails to explicitly and affirmatively acknowledge this disparity is one without true vision, honesty, and an ability to take into account the realities that people of color in this country face.

More from Tamika Butler (former CTC Commissioner):

• Planning While Black, NACTO 2016 Keynote by Tamika Butler. (2016, October 25).
• Vision Zero Cities Conference 2017, Tamika Butler Keynote Address. (2017, May 11).

Future of Transportation

• New Routes to Equity: The Future of Transportation in the Black Community. Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Accessed February 11, 2021.  Shared mobility, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles are rapidly changing our entire transportation system. Transportation policy and planning have historically left behind the Black community. The emerging mobility options offer a choice between a continued legacy of transportation inequity or a reimagined, equitable transportation system. This report identifies comprehensive policies that provide a pathway toward an equity future. Importantly, the policy recommendations must be adapted and tailored to the specific needs of local Black communities based on meaningful community engagement in the decision-making process.
• The Untokening Movement.  The Untokening is a movement started by and for individuals from marginalized groups who occupy stolen Indigenous land in North America. We intentionally center the lived experiences of BIPOC individuals in our visioning and action around the future of transportation and mobility.
• Justice-Oriented Mobility Advocates to “Untokenize” Active Transportation Movement at November Convening. Sulaiman, S. Streetsblog Los Angeles (2016, September 20).