The lack of access to transportation among low-income groups is increasingly being recognised as a barrier to employment and social inclusion both in Britain and the United States. This work looks at the delivery of transport from a social policy perspective to assist in a better understanding of this issue.

Publisher Description

Environmental justice is an increasingly important element of policymaking in transportation and is fundamentally about fairness toward the disadvantaged, often addressing the exclusion of racial and ethnic minorities from decisionmaking. This handbook is intended to help those who are new to transportation decision processes influence how environmental justice is incorporated into decisions about transportation policy and projects. Various approaches to environmental justice are discussed, along with steps in the planning process when citizen involvement is particularly effective, suggestions for how environmental justice can be included in a project, and legal requirements for environmental justice implementation.

The objective of this project has been to develop a series of practical indicators of economic, social, and environmental impacts related to transportation system changes. Comparing the spatial incidence of these impacts with the locations of low-income populations and minority populations, it is possible to assess whether the impacts would adversely and disproportionately affect these populations. Our intent is to help make it possible for everyone who is likely to be affected by a particular transportation system change to understand the expected types and magnitudes of anticipated impacts. The objective of such an understanding is to enable those who would be affected to determine which impacts would be most important to them.