Community Impact Assessment: Assessing Potential Land Use Impacts of Transportation Projects
		Jeff Kramer and Kristine Williams
		Session: Monday, April 17, 2000, 2:30-3:45	Author Info

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a suggested approach for assessing and addressing potential land use impacts of transportation projects. It draws from Community Impact Assessment: A Handbook for Transportation Professionals (Handbook), prepared for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) by the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida in Tampa as a supplemental guide to the FDOT's Project Development & Environment (PD&E) Manual. The Handbook is intended to provide practical, cost-effective, and simple to implement guidance to FDOT Environmental Management staff in the preparation of environmental documents relative to the assessment of potential social and economic impacts of transportation projects on communities and neighborhoods.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY IMPACT ASSESSMENT?
Community impact assessment is "a process to evaluate the effects of a transportation action on a community and its quality of life."¹

Community impact assessment (CIA) is "a process to evaluate the effects of a transportation action on a community and its quality of life." It is a way to incorporate community considerations into the planning and development of major transportation projects. From a policy perspective, it is a process for assessing the social and economic impacts of transportation projects as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The assessment may address a variety of important community issues such as land development, aesthetics, mobility, neighborhood cohesion, safety, relocation, and economic development.

WHY IS COMMUNITY IMPACT ASSESSMENT NEEDED?

Transportation projects can affect communities in a variety of ways - both positive and negative. On the negative side, transportation projects may be developed without attention to the surrounding area, thereby disrupting or dividing stable and cohesive neighborhoods, damaging community character, promoting urban sprawl, or impeding pedestrian mobility. On the positive side, transportation projects can be shaped to help revitalize business districts, stimulate economic development, improve access to jobs, reinforce growth management goals, and enhance community character.

Despite their importance, community issues have often not received the same priority in transportation project development as other environmental issues, such as recreational areas, historic structures, air quality, wetlands, or endangered species that are subject to special regulation or agency oversight. A community impact assessment program is one mechanism to assure that transportation projects are developed with full consideration of their impact on people and communities. In particular, CIA advances the following goals:

Quality of Life: Helps to promote livable, sustainable communities by placing priority on preserving or enhancing community character, neighborhood cohesion, social interaction, safety, economic prosperity, and general quality of life.

Responsiveness: Promotes responsive, community-sensitive decision-making in planning and developing transportation projects that embraces community concerns, seeks to minimize conflict, and works to help solve community problems.

Coordination: Improves coordination among the agencies and jurisdictions involved in transportation, land use, environmental preservation, resource management, and economic development.

Nondiscrimination: Ensures that environmental justice is achieved by alerting decision makers to impacts on all segments of society and avoiding disproportionate adverse impacts on specific populations.²

Organizational Issues & Objectives

Community impact assessment requires certain changes in the way transportation projects are planned and developed. First, transportation planners and project managers need to be responsive to community issues and more proactive in identifying and addressing potential adverse community impacts. The process for identifying community impacts must begin early enough to address such issues without incurring substantial production delays. This suggests the need to initiate community impact assessment in the planning phase, although the most in-depth assessment of community impacts will still occur during project development.

Second, the process must have continuity - that is, it should carry the identified issues and resulting commitments from planning through to construction.

Third, the process must be comprehensive and identify, as well as involve, other agencies that have a role in addressing community impacts. Overall, this represents a shift toward a more responsive and community sensitive decision-making process.

Legal Requirements and Policy Directions

Community impact assessment is legally required and supported by a host of Federal regulations, statutes, policies, technical advisories and Executive Orders dating back to the 1960s. The pivotal legislation requiring attention to community impacts is the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 or NEPA. NEPA was enacted due to growing concern over the environmental impacts of major federal actions and legislation, as well as increasing citizen activism on these issues.

The purpose of the NEPA process is to identify impacts on the quality of the environment. The Act called for a systematic and interdisciplinary approach to evaluating the environmental effects of transportation projects and identifying reasonable alternatives that avoid or reduce harmful impacts. Toward that end, NEPA required the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS) for federally funded actions that significantly affect the natural or human environment. Subsequent procedures established that proposed project decisions be in the overall public interest for safe and efficient transportation, and consider potential social, economic and environmental impacts and environmental protection goals. NEPA and supporting policies and regulations emphasized the importance of public involvement in these issues.

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1970 listed the social and economic impacts that must be considered for highway projects (Section 23 USC 109 (h)). These impacts are:

1. Air, Noise and Water Pollution,
2. Destruction or disruption of man-made resources, aesthetic values, community cohesion, and availability of public facilities and services,
3. Adverse employment effects, and tax and property value losses,
4. Injurious displacement of people, businesses and farms, and
5. Disruption of desirable community and regional growth.

The 1994 FHWA Environmental Policy Statement emphasizes the importance of ensuring adequate outreach to minority and low-income populations and calls for: "actively involving our partners and all affected parties in an open, cooperative, and collaborative process, beginning at the earliest planning stages and continuing through project development, construction, and operation."

This policy was supplemented by Executive Order 12898 on Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, and a corresponding U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) order on environmental justice, issued in 1997. The intent of these actions was to reinforce existing environmental and civil rights legislation and further ensure that minority and low-income populations "...are not subject to disproportionately high and adverse environmental effects of transportation policies, programs and projects."
 

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Standing Committee on the Environment, also became actively involved in community impact issues in the mid-1990s. AASHTO raised the need to better direct states on how to address community and social issues during planning and the NEPA process.  Two important guides related to community impacts grew out of this movement. One was an FHWA primer entitled "Community Impact Assessment: A Quick Reference for Transportation." The other was an FHWA guide entitled "Flexibility in Highway Design" that clarified the flexibility available to roadway designers when applying design criteria of the AASHTO "Green Book" (A Policy on the Geometric Design of Highways and Streets). The Flexibility in Highway Design guide emphasized the importance of "context sensitive design" of major roadways and the need to consider community values, the character of an area, and the needs of highway users, among other issues.

"...the standard or conservative use of the Green Book criteria and related State standards, along with a lack of full consideration of community values, can cause a road to be out of context with its surroundings. It may also preclude designers from avoiding impacts on important natural and human resources."  - Flexibility in Highway Design

The growing policy support for community impact assessment on the national level parallels the movement to streamline the environmental process. These policy initiatives are an effort to overcome what has historically been a disjointed, cumbersome, and often bureaucratic process that has fallen short of the policy intent of NEPA.

THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS

Community impact assessment is a fluid and iterative process that occurs throughout the life of a transportation project - from planning through construction and monitoring. The basic steps of the process are listed below. Public involvement is an integral part of each of these steps.

Step 1) Determine the nature of the project and define the study area.

Step 2) Develop a community profile to gain a thorough understanding of the study area, includeing any issues surrounding the project. This information provides a baseline for analysis and is used to understand what would happen in the community with and without the project.

Step 3) Analyze each project alternative and identify any potential impacts and the magnitude of those potential impacts.

Step 4) Identify potential solutions to identified potential adverse impacts.

Step 5) Document the findings of the assessment process, including any commitments made.

The level of effort involved in each step is a function of the size and complexity of the project, the level of controversy involved, and the potential for significant community impacts. If a project requires preparation of an environmental impact statement, it will also require a more detailed community impact assessment. If an issue surfaces that is of considerable concern to an affected community, it should be assessed regardless of the nature of the project. This assures that the issue will be adequately addressed.

Assessing Potential Land Use impacts

Predicting how transportation projects will affect land use and community planning objectives is an important step in the community impact assessment process. Although land use planning activities typically fall outside of the jurisdiction of many transportation agencies, lack of consideration of land use impacts can counteract the effectiveness of long-range transportation planning and growth management efforts. The analysis of land use impacts improves the potential to coordinate with agencies involved in land use decisions and engage them in a collaborative planning process.

Understanding Potential Land Use Impacts

Transportation projects can affect the rate of growth and the development patterns of an area. Some types of development may be directly induced by the project. However, most land use impacts are not direct consequences of the project, but rather occur indirectly due to changes in travel time and increased land accessibility. The result may be shifts in the spatial distribution of development over time, including such common changes as the introduction of new activity centers along a widened suburban arterial highway or localized commercial development around a new rural highway interchange.

Regional growth patterns depend on a range of factors, including the availability of water and sewer service, access to an educated workforce, the health of the regional and local economy and the quality of transportation infrastructure. Regardless of the precise influence of transportation infrastructure on growth, it is clear that land use and transportation are interdependent. The rate and pattern of development in urban areas is a key factor in predicting the need for additional roadway capacity. At the same time, the availability and efficiency of transportation systems is a major factor in development decisions. Although it is not possible to determine precisely how a transportation project will affect regional growth patterns, the assessment effort will uncover information that could be of significant value to transportation, economic development, and growth management programs.

Direct land use impacts include the actual conversion of productive land to transportation use, the removal of existing uses to accommodate the facility and any immediate changes to the overall character of the affected area. Indirect or secondary impacts of transportation projects on land use tend to occur over a long period and may involve changes in the overall development and growth of an area. Indirect impacts from transportation improvements can also be cumulative. For example, the addition of a new interchange may not in and of itself influence regional development patterns, but a new interchange and new arterial roadway may cumulatively influence regional development patterns. These impacts will vary depending upon the nature of the transportation improvement and other characteristics of an area that affect growth rates.

Regional growth inducement may result in impacts that are not only adverse to the community, but also can adversely impact the transportation investment. Imagine the following scenario:

1. Buildings are constructed in the planned future right-of-way of a proposed roadway, foreclosing opportunities to widen or interconnect roads where needed,
2. Thoroughfare frontage is strip zoned for commercial use or subdivided into small lots, with little attention to access control,
3. Poorly coordinated access systems force more trips onto the arterial;
4. Traffic conflicts multiply,
5. Crash rates rise,
6. Congestion increases,
7. Roadway improvements are needed sooner than expected, and
8. The cycle begins again, only structural improvements along the roadway have now increased the cost of future right-of-way and the ability to provide needed roadway capacity.

Data Sources
 

Determining Consistency

Urban planning programs rely on reasonable consistency between transportation and land use plans and projects. Without that consistency, it is difficult to accomplish desired objectives. The purpose of the consistency determination is to assure that the final project conforms to and supports, as much as feasible, the planning objectives of the affected area. Because land use and transportation are interdependent, the consistency determination will involve both land use and transportation plans and issues in the affected area. Making a consistency determination is fairly subjective and requires a combination of common sense and some working knowledge of transportation and growth management issues. In addition, because it is essentially a policy determination, the determination of consistency must be made in the context of the local political and socio-economic environment.

Below is a general process set forth for transportation agencies to determine the consistency of the transportation project with local and regional growth management plans. Of course, the process would need to be modified as necessary to accommodate local circumstances.

Work with local government and regional planning staff to identify current adopted plans for each affected jurisdiction. This includes all officially adopted regional and local plans that establish transportation and growth management policies and objectives for the study area. Primary sources include local government comprehensive plans and resulting land use regulations and strategic regional policy plans. Other important sources include adopted neighborhood plans, community redevelopment area plans, corridor management plans, transit development plans, or other officially adopted sub-area or program plans.

Consider the nature of the proposed project and review the identified plans to identify potential consistency issues. This review must be conducted for each project alternative as potential issues may vary. Examples of policies, objectives, or issues that might have a bearing on the consistency determination include:

1. A local comprehensive plan policy to avoid adding capacity to major roadways outside of an adopted urban service area;
2. A Main Street Plan objective to provide on street parking and street furniture to improve the image of a downtown shopping area;
3. A Transit Development Plan policy to co-develop bus transfer centers along new state roadways.
4. A Regional Policy Plan policy aimed at improving hurricane evacuation routes.

It is a good idea to meet with staff of all potentially affected agencies, including regional planning councils, water management districts, or other agencies that have an obvious interest in transportation or land use issues. During these meetings, also explore the role of each agency in helping address these issues.

Summarize findings. Briefly describe the type of plan reviewed and any potential consistency issues that arose through the review or discussion with agency staff. Be specific in describing the nature of the consistency issue and the potential role of each agency in addressing these issues. Also, document any relevant policies or objectives that are clearly in conflict with each other. This could be summarized briefly in text form and with a matrix that compares alternatives against various policies and each other.

Review the draft consistency determination with agency staff and study area stakeholders and revise the draft accordingly. This will broaden the perspective of the findings by incorporating opinions provided by individuals with various points of view. The benefit of this exercise is that potentially controversial items, which might arise at the public hearing, will be addressed early in the process.

The Handbook then instructs analyst that where project alternatives are determined to be consistent, no more action is required beyond documenting the process and findings. However, where the project alternatives are determined to be clearly inconsistent, the handbook advises that strategies to either make the project alternatives consistent or to address their potential adverse impacts must be developed.

Determination of Growth Inducement

The determination of growth inducement establishes whether project alternatives will induce growth or alter the planned pattern of development. There are three general categories of induced growth related to transportation projects³:

Projects serving specific land development, such as a highway interchange for a theme park,

Projects that would likely stimulate complementary land development, such as the development of a hotel near a large airport, and

Projects that would likely influence regional land development location decisions, such as a new highway providing convenient access to developable land on the fringe of a metropolitan area.

Determining if a transportation project falls within the first two categories of growth inducement is fairly straightforward. Determining if a transportation project would influence intra-regional land development decisions is more subjective. However, if conditions are generally favorable for growth in a region (sewer lines, relatively low land prices, natural amenities, etc.), then transportation improvements can dramatically influence the rate and location of development.

A land use modeling approach can be applied to make this determination. However, this approach is both data intensive and expensive. The Handbook offers a less expensive and equally effective approach by employing a checklist to determine regional growth inducement potential. The checklist approach provides guidance toward a general conclusion on growth inducement potential through the systematic consideration of common market factors applied by real estate investors when making a development or purchase decision.

The checklist developed for the Handbook addresses the following categories to help the analyst determine the potential for the project to induce growth in the study area:

Regional Study Area Conditions. This includes such things as the rate regional population increase, the presence of major growth generators in the region, and the vacancy rates for regional office/commercial market.

Local Study Area Conditions. This includes: 1) general indicators such as if the regional path of development is in the direction of the local study are and if the local study area is free of moratoriums on development, 2) indicators of conditions favorable to conversion of lower density development such as if the local study area is within a 30-minute drive of a major employment center and if the local vacant land is characterized by relatively large parcels, and 3) indicators of conditions favorable to conversion to higher density development such as if the local study area is served by existing principle arterials and water/sewer systems and if the local study area have relatively low land availability/high land prices.

Some of the checklist questions can be answered by consulting publicly available information such as U.S. census data, U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps and road maps. Other information, including known future development trends, will require contact with planners, officials, and real estate professionals familiar with the region or locality in question. As with the consistency determination, analysts are instructed that the key to making a reasonable determination of growth inducement is to involve study area stakeholders in the process. Addition, the Handbook emphasizes that the number and type of questions addressed needs to be tailored to the local study area and the type of project being considered.

The Handbook then instructs that if it is determined that the project alternatives would not induce growth, then no further action is required beyond documenting the process and findings. Alternatively, if it is determined that growth will be induced by the project alternatives, then the analyst is directed to determine if the potential for induced growth is consistent with local land use planning objectives for the study area. This can be achieved by reviewing issues and findings raised in the consistency review and considering the future land use plan for the study area.

If the potential for growth inducement is largely consistent with local future land use plans, the Handbook advises that no further action is required beyond documenting the process and findings. If the potential exists for growth inducement that is significantly inconsistent with local comprehensive plans or that could adversely affect the transportation investment, the Handbook states that the next step is to then consider alternative strategies for addressing potential growth impacts.

Mitigation and Problem Solving

Many methods for addressing potential impacts cannot be implemented by most transportation agencies, but are the responsibility of one of the stakeholder organizations (local jurisdictions, water management districts, federal agencies, etc.). Regardless, strategies for addressing project impacts should be identified and pursued. The community impact assessment process is an opportunity for the transportation agency to overcome jurisdictional barriers and partner with stakeholder agencies and organizations on creative solutions to transportation and development problems.

An example of this type of partnering might be a local jurisdiction implementing access management overlay zoning along a project corridor to preserve the safety and efficiency of the roadway as development occurs. In this example, only the local jurisdiction has the authority to implement the needed zoning changes, but the transportation agency could lend technical assistance. This strategy is particularly useful in study areas where the local jurisdiction lacks a full-time planning staff. Another example might be partnering with local agencies on the provision of alternative parking areas within walking distance of properties that have lost parking due to the project.

Also analysts are encouraged to look for ways that the project may be able to help solve community problems. Some areas have contaminated brownfield sites that have not been developed due to clean up costs. In this scenario, transportation agencies could consider locating transportation projects on brownfield sites and to configure transportation systems to assure that sites slated for redevelopment are well served by transportation.
 

Conclusion

The advancement of comprehensive and extensive community impact assessment programs in Florida and throughout the United States will ensure that human needs and community values are fully considered in transportation planning and project development. The handbook and training developed for FDOT will advance that process in Florida by providing analysts with practical, "how-to" guidance for identifying, evaluating and mitigating a broad range of social and economic impacts of transportation projects.

Footnotes
1. FHWA, Community Impact Assessment: A Quick Reference for Transportation, September 1996.
2. FHWA, Community Impact Assessment: A Quick Reference for Transportation, September 1996.
3. FHWA, Community Impact Assessment: A Quick Reference for Transportation, September 1996.

Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2000 By Author

Jeff Kramer, AICP
Kristine Williams, AICP
Center for Urban Transportation Research,
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida

Jeff Kramer, AICP is a Research Associate with the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Kristine Williams, AICP is a Senior Research Associate with the Center for Urban Transportation Research.

They can be reached at www.cutr.eng.usf.edu .