COMMUNITY IMPACT ASSESSMENT: A HANDBOOK FOR TRANSPORTATION PROFESSIONALS

The objective of this project is to provide practical, cost-effective and community driven methods for identifying, evaluating, and addressing community impacts that are oriented toward the practitioner. Transportation projects can have major social and economic effects-both positive and negative. Assessment of community impact provides insight into ways projects can be improved or redefined to reduce adverse impacts and increase overall project benefits, both for the affected communities and the traveling public. Community impact assessment also support the intent of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the federal law governing the environmental decision-making process for federally funded transportation projects. Although NEPA places equal emphasis on both the natural and human environment, much of the attention in environmental impact assessment has been placed on the natural environment. In an effort to address that inequity, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is developing a community impact assessment program to provide equal attention to how transportation projects affect people and communities. The program is to be carried out primarily during the environmental assessment process, but has implications for planning through construction. This effort coincides with the national movement toward context-sensitive design in the engineering arena and the sustainable development in the planning arena. In support of the statewide community impact assessment program, the FDOT asked the Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida to develop a handbook and training on community impact assessment.