Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, attention increasingly has been focused on socialjustice issues, mainly human health and access to services. With the Clinton executiveorder in 1994, Federal agencies were mandated to avoid disproportionate adverseenvironmental impacts to minority and low-income populations, in all agency actions,including both plans and projects. Subsequent USDOT rules expanded this order toinclude all social and economic impacts in transportation planning and project funding.Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are the most-relevant agencies, in terms ofthis type of equity analysis, and generally have not used their existing modeling tools toproject plan or project impacts on protected groups in any detail. We will use Californiaas a case study, because a recent State law requires the State's 18 MPOs to adoptSustainable Communities Strategies to reduce greenhouse gases in their RegionalTransportation Plans, starting in 2012. This law requires certain environmental justiceanalyses and also substantial improvements in MPO modeling capabilities. California'slargest four MPOs are developing improved travel models and land use models. Weevaluate if these improved models will be capable of evaluating the equity effects ofregional plans.
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