Strategic Goal: Protect and enhance the natural environment and communities affected by highway transportation.

Strategic Objective: Enhance community and social benefits of highway transportation.

Performance Goal: In FY 2001, FHWA will increase public satisfaction with highway systems and highway projects as a beneficial part of their community by promoting responsive and well targeted transportation programs.

Performance Measure/Target
Level of community satisfaction with the Nation's highway system and projects toward meeting community quality of life goals (using a National FHWA Omnibus survey; see also mobility goal).

FY 2000 baseline data will be available in late 2000. Targets will be established in early 2001.

The Federal Highway Administration is committed to protecting and enhancing the natural environment and communities affected by highway transportation. Highways and transportation facilities are major contributors to the quality of life in communities. Our objective is to enhance community and social benefits of highway transport by ensuring that transportation plans and operations address the community concerns and social impacts of transportation facilities, by recognizing the role of transportation in supporting welfare-to-work, mobility for people with low incomes, and accessibility for people with disabilities, and by reducing the adverse effects of siting, construction, and operation of transportation facilities on the communities, particularly disadvantaged communities (DOT outcome goal).

A Federal Executive Order calls for every Federal agency to make environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing the effects of all programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations. FHWA’s environmental justice initiatives accomplish this goal by involving the potentially affected public in developing transportation projects which fit harmoniously within their communities without sacrificing safety or mobility.

FHWA and its partners will implement planning and environmental regulations to streamline transportation decisionmaking, enabling States and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to advance environmentally sound projects more expeditiously. The new rules will provide for closer linkages between planning and project development under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Although the American public has multiple and disparate expectations for transportation and quality of life, FHWA expects its new statewide and metropolitan planning regulations and its new environmental regulations under NEPA to greatly enhance the benefits of transportation on the human and natural environment.

Requests for funding through Federal-aid highway programs which benefit the Human and Natural Environment, such as the Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot Program, have consistently exceeded the available funds. This response indicates a pressing need in communities to leverage resources to make their communities more livable.

Strategies: Enhancing Communities Through Highway Transportation—The FHWA will foster community and regional level transportation solutions through enhancements in urban and rural community planning, operations, and project development. FHWA will partner with Federal land management agencies, and State, regional, local, and tribal government planners and project development specialists. We will develop and share tools to effectively incorporate livability; environmental justice; the preservation of scenic, historic, natural, and community resources; just and fair property acquisition; bicycle and pedestrian access; and traffic safety into transportation plans and projects. To accelerate and improve decisionmaking, FHWA will promote processes which effectively integrate Federal, State, and local transportation, land use, and environmental decisionmaking in an effective, streamlined, and timely manner.

Strategic Objective: Improve the quality of the natural environment by reducing highway-related pollution and by protecting and enhancing ecosystems.

Strategies: Sustaining the Quality of the Natural Environment: Through research, new technologies, and analytical models, FHWA will promote the construction, maintenance, and use of highways that are compatible with the national environmental objectives. In partnership with our stake holders, we will support the development of environmental analytical models to assist decisionmakers. FHWA will provide resources, guidance, and technical assistance for States and local agencies to ensure compliance with the revised National Ambient Air Quality Standards, especially reducing transportation-related emissions.