Environmental Injustice and Transportation: The Claims and the Evidence

Abstract

Belief that transportation investment and operations have caused environmental damage in poor and minority communities to benefit the more affluent has prompted planning agencies to craft policies aimed at promoting environmental justice. Yet, we have only scattered evidence about the distribution of the costs and benefits derived from transportation policy, investment, and planning. This article creates a framework based in distributive justice for categorizing the existing research into cost-based and benefit-based claims of injustice. The authors go on to synthesize the cost-based research, which measures the distribution of pollution and hazards from transportation. From this survey, myriad research opportunities emerge.