From Transportation Equity to Transportation Justice: Within, Through, and Beyond the State

TLDR

Transportation policies and projects are governed by state institutions whose high costs and performance assessments often overlook equity, prompting environmental justice scholars to critique the state's role and urging planners to critically evaluate state-sponsored methods. The study aims to reframe transportation equity as transportation justice, expanding the focus to align with social change models from environmental justice scholarship. The authors propose shifting the analytical lens toward transportation justice by adopting models of social change advocated in environmental justice literature and related movements.

Abstract

Transportation policies, plans, and projects all flow through state institutions because of the substantial cost of infrastructure and the need to assess transportation system performance, including equity implications. But environmental justice scholarship interrogates the state’s role in perpetuating injustice. Most research and planning practice related to transportation equity has relied upon state-sponsored analytical methods. Transportation planners and scholars can benefit from critical assessments of these approaches. We propose a shift in focus from transportation equity to a broader consideration of transportation justice that is more closely aligned with models of social change promulgated in the environmental justice literature and by related movements.