The murder of George Floyd brought social justice issues once again to the forefront for Minnesotans. It prompted the need for examination of how, who, and what the Minnesota Department of Transportation did in fulfilling its purpose and mission. At MnDOT, we now recognize how systemic racism and social injustice have influenced our built and natural environments. How these realities have specifically excluded Black, indigenous, and other people of color in decision-making around benefits, impacts, and placement of transportation facilities and services. This led to inequitable policies, actions, systems, and landscapes in the past and are still persistent today. Throughout the past few years, we have been engaging our communities on the impact and needs associated with transportation facilities and services through a lens broader than construction. Our conversations with communities on transportation equity issues uncovered the need to define transportation equity, acknowledge historic harms associated with building facilities, maintaining and expanding our transportation system, and a need to commit to a more equitable transportation system.

To build on this internal momentum, we wanted to learn from other state departments of transportation on what they were hearing, what methods and tools they were using, and what successes and less-than-successful outcomes they could share. MnDOT also wanted to share what we are doing in the spirit of learning and sharing.

Our main goals for the peer exchange were to:

• Discuss embedding equity in the planning, programming, and design of transportation investments and projects
• Address transportation deficiencies and disparate impacts generated as a result of past decisions
• Collaborate with partner agencies to identify holistic, equitable, and people-centric solutions
• Build on collective lessons learned as we move forward

We learned transportation equity doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. Equity represents a journey and that, like MnDOT, our peer agencies are all in different places on their journeys to create, maintain, and operate an equitable and safe multimodal transportation system in their respective states.

• Illinois has equity as a core value, includes equity in its long-range planning processes, and is developing tools to measure equity.
• Pennsylvania recognized that past infrastructure policies did not fully address equity. In response, the state DOT initiated several efforts to examine the gaps in their policies and processes.
• While Michigan has not formalized their definition of transportation equity, their internal conversations have led to guiding elements of transportation equity. The state DOT initiated significant efforts to reconnect neighborhoods that were disconnected by past urban renewal schedules and construction of I-375.
• California went through an extensive process to update its strategic plan to make equity a major goal and strategic objective of the plan. This included the establishment of a centralized office to lead the integration of civil rights, environmental justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. The state DOT is also developing an equity index to identify and assess the severity of disadvantages their communities and neighborhoods are facing.

MnDOT was wrestling with metrics, tools, where and what were questions to address. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We learned what to consider as we developed and began the deployment of equity metrics throughout the planning, design, and construction phases to help align our definition of transportation equity, desired outcomes, and policy and program supports.

Our state DOT peers provided an overview of their metrics, processes to define those metrics, and implementation ideas. Understanding this process and how peers plan to incorporate these considerations into project selection, scoping, and design will help us better implement our definition of transportation equity. We also appreciated the key case studies of projects and how other state departments of transportation have engaged with communities on different approaches to projects that enhanced equitable outcomes.

In addition to externally-facing activities, our peers provided examples of how to institutionalize transportation equity and its definition as a part of their organizational culture. We learned the importance of having executive and management champions that advance transportation equity at the various decision tables and promoting organizational culture that ensure our boards and commissions are reflective of the communities we serve to the extent possible.

Overall, we appreciated the complexities and the nuances of transportation equity and the need to commit the time and resources needed to continue advancing transportation equity. We also appreciated the momentum, energy, and enthusiasm of our peers to regularly convene, continue the dialogue, support one another, and learn from each other as we move forward.