Transportation Planning Capacity Building Program

- Peer Open Forum Report -

Community Impact Assessment Roundtable

I. Summary

The Community Impact Assessment (CIA) Peer Roundtable brought together representatives of nine State departments of transportation and one representative of a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) to discuss the creation and implementation of CIA guidance. Using the methodologies of CIA, States are able to evaluate - through quantitative and qualitative assessment tools, including public participation - the local and regional impacts of the construction of transportation infrastructure. This Roundtable provided an opportunity for representatives of those States that have been leaders in the field of CIA to present their policies and procedures to representatives of other States that are just beginning the process of developing CIA guidelines, and for all of the participants to discuss together the pressing issues, challenges, and opportunities in the field of CIA.

Although the Roundtable served primarily as an opportunity for the sharing of information and experiences among peers, several suggestions for next steps were articulated. Most of the suggestions were aimed specifically at those States and individuals involved with the 2004 National CIA Workshop and the 2005 Regional CIA Workshop (see below for more information on the workshops).

• Those who are interested in and work with CIA should begin to shift the national CIA dialogue away from an emphasis on theory to an emphasis on practice.
• Those who are interested in and work with CIA should encourage the MPOs with which they work to incorporate CIA into their planning process.
• The TRB CIA Joint Subcommittee (JS) should partner with its counterpart at the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) to work toward dovetailing their two processes.

II. Background

In addition to providing an introduction to the Peer Exchange Program, Brenda Kragh, of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Planning, opened the Roundtable with a discussion of the history of CIA:

• 1964 - Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI)
• 1969 - Passage of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
• 1970 - Passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act (created 23 USC 109(h))
• 1990 - FHWA's first Environmental Policy Statement
• 1991 - Passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA)
• 1994 - FHWA's second Environmental Policy Statement
• 1996 - Release of Community Impact Assessment: A Quick Reference for Transportation
• 1998 - Passage of the Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) and release of Community Impact Mitigation: Case Studies
• 2000 - First National CIA workshop
• 2001 - First two regional / "how-to" CIA workshops and creation of TRB CIA JS

Ms. Kragh described the main precepts of CIA as follows:

• A focus on the human environment.
• A holistic approach to evaluating the impacts of transportation decisions.
• More than identifying environmental justice communities, performing public involvement, and mitigating right-of-way acquisition (the Uniform Relocation Act of 1987).
• The use of public involvement as a tool for gathering information and empowering individuals and communities.
• A process begun in planning that must be continuously revisited throughout the development of a project.

III. Roundtable Format

The Roundtable covered 1.5 days and included both formal and informal presentations, and opportunities for informal group discussion. The Roundtable produced no specific recommendations for future action, but did generate a series of issues and topics of importance for professionals working in the field of CIA.

IV. Issues

The Roundtable participants listed the following issues as important for discussion:

• The rationale for CIA.
• The role of CIA in the development of long-range transportation and land use plans.
• The obstacles to institutionalizing CIA within State DOT planning and engineering processes.
• The different methodologies used in performing CIA evaluations.
• The importance of better linking project planning and project development.
• The challenge of protecting communities that do not meet the regulatory threshold for Title VI but still face adverse impacts from transportation decisions.
• The connection between CIA and the calculation of indirect impacts and cumulative impacts from all projects (not just transportation).
• The role of geographic information systems (GIS) and other technologies in planning - a concern the technology can distance planners from the communities in which they work.
• Concern that the demands of CIA and Title VI will discourage State DOTs from providing transportation services to certain communities, thereby denying those communities needed access and mobility options.
• The challenge of involving natural resource agencies in CIA - how to balance the needs of the natural environment with those of the human environment.
• The challenge of assessing the impact of transportation decisions that impact multiple, diverse communities.
• The challenge of designing transportation projects on roads that traverse community centers.
• The challenge of finding sufficient CIA expertise, whether in State DOT employees, MPO employees, or consultants. There is a need for State-by-State and national training on the precepts and techniques of CIA.
• Concern that the move toward environmental streamlining will reduce the emphasis on CIA and public involvement in planning and project development.
• How best to perform data collection (door-to-door, etc).
• Transportation projects can be catalysts for implementing widespread community improvements, involving multiple agencies. The CIA process is one way to identify community needs and help link a community to available resources.
• How to integrate CIA concepts with the concepts of Title VI - is it possible to create a single, consolidated project development process?
• How to encourage local governments and MPOs to perform more of the foundation work for CIA, including determining the community values and demographics that feed CIA analyses. Data shouldn't be collected on a project-specific basis, but should be collected, stored, and maintained on an on-going basis.
• How much guidance should FHWA provide on CIA?
• How to emphasize that a Context Sensitive Design (CSD) is a safe design.

• New techniques for effective public involvement.
• The challenge of involving hard-to-reach communities, including the very poor, the very wealthy, new immigrants, and non-English speakers.
• The importance of identifying the best public involvement techniques for use in each particular community.
• The need to provide State DOT staff with sufficient training in the management of public involvement processes.
• The importance of involving diverse State transportation specialties - planners, engineers, architects, etc. - in public involvement processes.
• The role of consultants in managing public involvement processes.
• The priority afforded to public involvement in design-build projects.

V. State DOT Perspective - States with CIA Guidance

Maryland DOT has developed draft CIA guidance for use by any employee of the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) who works with project planning and development, including consultants. (In Maryland, consultants handle the majority of Environmental-Assessment and Environmental-Impact-Statement work). A team of MD DOT employees developed the guidance, with assistance from Straughan Environmental Services and FHWA.

In the development of CIA guidance, it was discovered that many of the precepts of CIA were already in use at MD DOT, but they required codification and standardization across the agency. Furthermore, MD DOT has had to work to overcome the distrust of its motives and actions felt by some communities in Maryland. The agency is working to reestablish it credibility. The management team at Maryland DOT has been supportive of the CIA concept. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge replacement project, part of I-95, has been used as a model for CIA implementation.

The MD DOT CIA guidance includes the following:

• Frequent communication with the public.
• Public outreach through surveys, door-to-door contact, and booths at community events (e.g., street fairs).
• Awareness of cultural and linguistic differences in public outreach efforts.
• The use of vocabulary and ideas, in the explanation of transportation projects, that are understandable by the general public.
• The development of the "ambassador" program, in which umbrella organizations are encouraged to work with MD DOT to represent their constituencies. MD DOT expects that this will make it easier to reach more groups, particularly those already organized to respond to public and political issues.
• The identification of pilot projects for the investigation of innovative public involvement techniques.

In the coming months, the MD DOT CIA guidance will be finalized and a training course will be held to explain the new guidelines.

NC DOT has been working to develop CIA procedures for the past 6 to 8 years.

In order to better address the needs of the public, NC DOT has created an Office of Human Environment, which is responsible for air quality analyses; noise impacts, assessment and abatement; community planning (including CIA); public involvement; and historic preservation. At present, NC DOT is in the process of drafting guidance on CIA, drafting guidance on the noise abatement policy, and updating its existing guidance on public involvement. These documents are being prepared collaboratively and in concert. NC DOT is working to be more targeted in involving staff members with the appropriate expertise in public involvement processes.

NC DOT has also developed a checklist to assist in performing CIA evaluations. Due to a large backlog of transportation projects that require CIA evaluations, NC DOT has used contractors - with mixed success - to assist with the work. NC DOT is currently training its own staff to be able to handle CIA-related tasks.

Mr. Goode believes that data collected for CIA evaluations should be more narrative and qualitative, and based on person-to-person contact rather than totally relying on GIS and other technical data. NC DOT is also incorporating indirect and cumulative impact (ICI) analyses into CIA reports since some of the data needed for each are the same. This has added more significance to the CIA since the ICI is needed for the 404-water quality permits.

CIA tasks generally consume a very small percentage of an overall project budget.

Florida is a rapidly growing State, with a diverse population and many environmental regulations. In 1986, FL DOT created a working group to evaluate all of the disparate laws - State and Federal - that had bearing on the evaluation of the impact of transportation projects on Florida communities. Using staff members from many offices within FL DOT, every regulation and law was reviewed and a list of suggested updates and modifications was developed.

Since the completion of that effort, Mr. Irwin has worked to integrate the concepts of CIA into the daily work of FL DOT. A toolkit and training program on CIA has been developed for the benefit of FL DOT staff, MPO staff, and consultants. Brochures have been printed to explain the concepts of CIA, which are now referred to as "socio-cultural effects" within FL DOT. Socio-cultural effects are one of the 16 criteria used to evaluate transportation projects in Florida. All collected project information, including socio-cultural information, is stored within a FL DOT project database.

FL DOT employs community liaisons to work with area MPOs, local communities, and Native American tribes. FL DOT aims to integrate community needs early in the process of project scoping, in order to reduce expense, delay, and controversy. It has been difficult, historically, for FL DOT to coordinate well with MPOs on the collection of demographic and community data. As part of the liaison effort, FL DOT is hoping to change that.

Mr. Irwin emphasized the importance of documenting all public outreach efforts.

Performance measures are currently being developed to evaluate the success of the FL DOT socio-cultural effects program.

The challenge for FL DOT has been to determine the best methodology for evaluating community impacts in individual situations. Sufficient staffing and expertise is also a problem, as is on-going confusion between the concept of socio-cultural effects and the requirements of Title VI.

VI. State DOT Perspective - States Embarking on CIA Guidance

NJ DOT does not have formal guidance on CIA - NJ DOT has been using the term context sensitive design (CSD) in place of CIA - but is currently working to develop a CIA methodology to use in conjunction with its existing data collection work, which includes survey research. NJ DOT has followed the principles developed by FL DOT and has tried to involve as many NJ DOT staff members as possible in the movement to CSD. Approximately 800 people - both NJ DOT employees and members of the general public - have already taken NJ DOT CSD training. The training emphasizes that transportation infrastructure is a major part of place-making, and that it must be designed carefully and with attention to the existing community context. NJ DOT recently partnered with the National Transit Institute to develop CSD training, which can be used in the future by any State.

In general, Mr. Toth has found it necessary to encourage a change of culture within NJ DOT, one that allows the agency to move away from its historical focus on the mobility of the motoring public as the major priority in transportation decisionmaking to one that incorporates community needs and quality of life. As part of New Jersey's CSD training, the office of the New Jersey Attorney General told both NJ DOT and members of the public that engineers can generate designs that are not in strict conformity with AASHTO and State design standards, provided that the designer has good reasons for his/her choices and documents the decisionmaking process. This outreach effort helped to encourage all, including NJ DOT engineers and planners, to think more broadly and flexibly about the possibilities of creating roadways and other infrastructure that fit better into communities, particularly small communities.

One key element of fostering CSD has been to have the NJ DOT design staff actively work closely with community members during public involvement, instead of delegating that task to environmental or community involvement specialists. Additionally, the use of project teams - teams that incorporate multiple professional specialties - as the entity for making design decisions allows for a diversity of ideas.

NJ DOT has found one of the challenges of CSD to lie in the process of defining a particular community - its boundaries, citizens, needs, and history. Sometimes, it is necessary to recognize and work with several communities within a community. Finding a way to involve lower income populations in meaningful transportation decisionmaking has been a real challenge. To address this problem, NJ DOT conducts public-involvement processes that are as broadly inclusive as possible, meeting with property owners and neighborhood groups themselves, while also working with official government representatives. NJ DOT has considered using its variable message signs as a way to advertise public meetings, and has used its website to solicit public input. Lengthy public involvement processes are encouraged as a means to capture a broad spectrum of opinions.

For projects of local significance, NJ DOT now allows communities to decide whether to widen roads or not. If safety problems are not present, or if the road under study does not carry regionally significant traffic (most roads in New Jersey do not carry such traffic), transportation decisions that address congestion are delegated to local communities, if those decisions make possible the realization of other community priorities.

Mr. Zampogna became involved in CIA after attending the 1998 CIA workshop held in Tampa, Florida. The present and the last gubernatorial administrations in Pennsylvania have placed emphasis on such issues as land-use planning, transportation planning, socio-economic issues, and public involvement. PENNDOT set out to develop a strategy and policy to work proactively in collaboration with communities in implementing the principles of CIA throughout the transportation project-development process. Mr. Zampogna formed a working group with responsibility for developing a CIA strategy and policy for PENNDOT. The work group consisted of PENNDOT members from the Design, Planning, Environment, and District Offices; and members from FHWA, the State's Department of Community and Economic Development, and a County Planning Commission. That policy is now ready for distribution, and will eventually be used to develop a handbook and a training course.

Throughout the development of the PENNDOT CIA policy statement, Mr. Zampogna emphasized that the tasks of CIA evaluation are not new to PENNDOT, but they simply need to be enhanced, improved, and formalized. Furthermore, community data needs to be analyzed for information about impacts, not simply collected.

PENNDOT has developed a narrative/checklist to be used in the CIA and Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) programs by PENNDOT employees, consultants, MPO staff members, and others. Mr. Zampogna hopes that each transportation project will have a reporting mechanism for CIA, so that all of the collected information can be updated throughout the project-development process, and consolidated and maintained in the project file.

For the purposes of CIA, PENNDOT has found it challenging to define the boundaries and characteristics of a particular community. Furthermore, PENNDOT is working to evaluate and balance the different transportation impacts (positive and adverse) of a project for the human environment and the natural environments.

In the late 1990s, WSDOT held a training course on context sensitive solutions, sparking interest in new and innovative ways of planning and designing transportation projects. FHWA has also pressed WSDOT to consider new ways of managing the delivery of projects, in part because FHWA felt that WSDOT had collected insufficient data on project impacts on the human environment.

WSDOT is currently working to finalize a context sensitive solutions (CSS) policy, which will then be complemented by a training course (to be offered most likely in the winter of 2003-2004). The expected outcome of the CSS policy and training will be better coordination with existing processes, improved collaboration and partnering, better reflection of community needs and values, and institutionalized CSS concepts in project planning and design.

Indiana is not far along in developing a CIA policy, and has instead been focusing on making context sensitive design an integral part of the IN DOT planning process. The following is a list of CSD/CIA-related issues with which IN DOT is currently wrestling:

• Should CIA evaluations be done for all transportation projects?
• How to encourage IN DOT staff to perform CSD/CIA analyses at the beginning of projects.
• How to alter the perception that CIA and CSD only produce frivolous amenities for communities, rather than crucial improvements.
• How to address the staffing and funding shortfalls that present obstacles to CSD/CIA.

ODOT is at the very beginning stages of developing a CIA policy - the development is currently on hold - but many CIA-related concepts are already in practice.

MaineDOT does not have an explicit CIA policy, but many of the concepts of CIA are employed throughout the MaineDOT project-development process. Ms. Lindsey-Foster is working to better institutionalize CIA, as MaineDOT has recently encountered community resistance on a number of projects. She is now working to develop a CIA policy for MaineDOT, as a whole, that will eventually form the basis for a CIA handbook.

VII. MPO Perspective

Ms. Rockwell is currently working to develop a community profile for Miami-Dade County, and is working with students from Florida International University to develop the different criteria and data points that will inform the profile. The profile will be completed in GIS and will eventually be publicly available on the Internet.

In a broad way, Ms. Rockwell wants to consider how MPOs and State DOTs can better collaborate on the tasks of CIA.

VIII. Conclusions/Take-Away Lessons

• A focus on the human environment.
• A holistic approach to evaluating the impact of transportation decisions.
• The use of public involvement as a tool for gathering information and empowering individuals and communities.
• The importance of identifying appropriate public involvement techniques for use with individual communities, based on the community needs.
• A process begun in planning that must be continuously reconsidered throughout the development of a project.
• The importance of encouraging a change of culture/outlook in State DOTs.
• The importance of developing staff expertise in CIA analyses.
• CIA incorporates the concepts of Title VI, but also goes beyond them.
• Public involvement is an important tool for determining community impacts.

IX. For More Information:

More information on CIA can be found at www.ciatrans.net.

The following States, although not in attendance at the Roundtable, have developed CIA guidance and could serve as resources on the topic:

• California
• Kentucky
• Texas

X. Attachments/Links

1. Attendees List
2. North Carolina Department of Transportation Community Impact Assessment Checklist