Executive Order 13274
Integrated Planning

Work Group

Baseline Report
and Preliminary Gap Analysis

March 15, 2005

ICF Consulting conducted the research and prepared this draft report. The report was reviewed by the Integrated Planning Work Group and incorporates its comments and recommendations to the Task Force.

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Acknowledgements

This report was prepared under the direction of the Executive Order 13274 Integrated Planning Work Group, whose membership included the following individuals.

The report was prepared by the following ICF Consulting staff:

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
2. 1. Background and Introduction
3. 2. Integrated Planning: Needs, Concepts, and Goals
   1. 2.1 Current Approaches and New Challenges
   2. 2.2 What is Integrated Planning?
   3. 2.3 Primary Challenges to Integrated Planning
4. 3. Resolving Challenges: Capitalizing On Existing Opportunities
   1. 3.1 Brief Overview of Transportation and Resource Planning
   2. 3.2 Taking Advantage of Relevant Resource Process Outputs
   3. 3.3 Other Strategies for Resolving Challenges
5. 4. Examples of Innovative Practice
   1. 4.1 Florida: Efficient Transportation Decision-Making (ETDM) Process
   2. 4.2 Oregon: Major Bridge Replacement Program
   3. 4.3 Texas: Environmental Resource Stewards (TERS) and Ecological Assessment Protocol (TEAP)
   4. 4.4 Indiana: I-69 Long-Range Plan
   5. 4.5 North Front Range: Regional Plan
6. 5. Moving Toward an Integrated Planning Framework
   1. 5.1 Integrated Planning Needs, Concepts, and Goals
   2. 5.2 Strategies For Needed Progressions
   3. 5.3 Federal Leadership Activities
   4. 5.4 Closing Words
7. Appendices
   1. Appendix A: Commonly Used Acronyms
   2. Appendix B: Integrated Planning Interview Participants

Executive Summary

On September 18, 2002, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order (EO) 13274, Environmental Stewardship and Transportation Infrastructure Project Reviews. This EO established an Interagency Task Force to advance current DOT and interagency environmental stewardship and streamlining efforts, to coordinate expedited decision-making related to transportation projects across federal agencies, and to bring high-level officials to the table to address priority projects. The Task Force established an interagency Work Group on Integrated Planning, which recognized the continuing need to more effectively "link" short and long-range transportation planning and corridor level planning studies performed by state and local governments with resource agency and land use planning processes, and with project-specific environmental reviews, approvals, and permitting processes.

Drawing on the results of literature reviews, practitioner interviews, and associated analyses conducted to meet the objectives of the tasks outlined above, this report (on Priority 1 – Establish Baseline – of the Work Group's activities) presents a conceptual framework for integrated transportation planning; identifies opportunities for better linking land and resource planning processes with transportation systems planning; describes the challenges that inhibit an integrated approach, as well as approaches for resolving challenges and capitalizing on existing opportunities, identified by the workgroup; provides examples of innovative initiatives and practices that states and localities have implemented to forge integration; and discusses the types of federal action that can motivate the development and implementation of integrated transportation planning and project development processes.

This report identifies three levels of recommendations for consideration by the Interagency Task Force. As depicted in Exhibit ES-1, the three levels include:

1. Recommendations on the components of an integrated planning framework and the associated objectives and outcomes that should be pursued and that should ensue;

2. Recommendations on the types of strategies that can be implemented readily to achieve objectives and to make progress toward integrated decision-making; and

3. Recommendations on specific Federal government activities to begin forging an integrated planning approach.

Integrated Planning Needs, Concepts, and Goals

Integrated transportation planning is about a collaborative, well-coordinated decision-making process that solves the mobility and accessibility needs of communities in a manner that optimizes across multiple community goals—from economic development and community livability to environmental protection and equity. It is about providing users of transportation systems with choices, and about providing information on the performance of transportation networks and facilities that reflects what customers value most.

As depicted in Exhibit ES-2, an integrated planning framework is characterized by the following elements:

• Integration with land use planning and across transportation modes and capacity enhancement options. Looking at transportation as a system requires a more careful and robust assessment of the various options available to planners and decision-makers for addressing accessibility, safety, and mobility needs. To do that, transportation professionals need a process that integrates transportation and land use. The use of tools such as FHWA's Scenario Planning can assist transportation professionals in integrating transportation and land use and guide consideration of alternative solutions, from operations to land use measures.[1]

• Integration of the transportation system with other human and natural systems. As part of the planning process, the manner in which transportation interacts with other systems that constitute our rural and metropolitan areas, such as urban, economic, ecological, and other infrastructure, needs to be addressed in a more holistic fashion by using integrated institutional arrangements and more collaborative and better-coordinated decision-support processes.*

• Integration of transportation systems planning with transportation programming and project development. Integration of transportation system planning processes and project planning and development processes would help to ensure that the best possible projects are implemented in a timely manner, and that these projects best optimize across social, environmental, and economic goals.

• Performance monitoring and evaluation. Integrated planning requires effective and transparent monitoring of implemented solutions and by extension the development of relevant measures to project and then track the performance of transportation strategies, facilities, corridors, and networks for progress toward both environmental and transportation goals.

The spirit of the laws and regulations that govern surface and transportation and aviation systems planning, programming, and project development are consistent with the objectives and desired outcomes of integrated planning frameworks. Yet, a number of important challenges must be overcome.

• Transportation planning processes are struggling to achieve a "transportation-as-a-system" perspective. A holistic approach to improving the transportation system has yet to take hold in common transportation planning practice.

• Institutional and political conditions are difficult to navigate. Transportation planning, construction, and operations functions have been compartmentalized into disparate local and state agencies, making it difficult for multiple decision-makers to form plans, programs, and projects that are optimal for the system as a whole. Political considerations can also create challenges for a holistic approach, sometimes heavily favoring large new infrastructure investments.

• Public participation processes are not well-developed. Visioning components that incorporate extensive public input are not yet commonplace in transportation planning practices.

• Modeling and other analysis tools continue to warrant refinements. Vast improvements have been made since the advent of computer modeling, but continual and further advancements are needed to help communities and agencies better understand the interactions between land use, transportation demand, transportation capacity, and environmental systems.

• Transportation planning processes are struggling to more proactively optimize across environmental, social, and economic objectives. Growth pressures inextricably link transportation with land use, but planning for each occurs separately from the other. This same disconnect also occurs with respect to the development of resource conservation plans.

  Box ES-4: Integrated Planning Challenges

  In addition to challenges facing transportation and resource planning, there are practical challenges to better interagency coordination that, if addressed, would translate into significant gains toward a more integrated planning approach. The following integrated planning challenges have been identified:

  • Agencies are unaware of the planning outputs of other agencies.
  • Mechanisms and legal frameworks to engage resource agencies early in transportation systems planning are generally lacking.
  • Resource agency structures and cultures do not actively support involvement in integrated planning processes.
  • Societal state of the art knowledge of ecosystem function and relationships is limited.
  • Agencies are constrained by available resources.
  • Local land use is sensitive to fiscal, economic, and political constraints.

• More emphasis on regional scale resource analysis and protection. Current resource conservation processes tend to focus on site-specific needs, but this approach creates incomplete knowledge about the most critical resources in a particular geographic area, and requires expending the same amount of effort for all projects, regardless of any differences in the impact one project might have over another.

  Likewise, for transportation decision-making processes to fully capitalize on existing opportunities to more effectively incorporate social, economic, and environmental considerations, evolutions are needed to move forward the state of resource planning practice.

• More comprehensive resource inventories. The current lack of a landscape-scale, regional perspective also results in incomplete inventories of natural and cultural resources. A single, comprehensive source for environmental information capable of being shared and updated among numerous agencies could serve as the cornerstone of integrated planning processes, informing discussions about interactions between human and environmental systems.

• More environmental considerations in local land planning. Local land planning is a major component to integrated planning, but currently does not support an integrated approach. Integrated planning is greatly facilitated when cultural and natural resource goals and information are incorporated holistically into land use decision processes, enabling better optimization across multiple objectives.

Strategies for Needed Progressions

The strategies for accomplishing the desired objectives and outcomes of integrated planning, and for overcoming challenges such as those discussed above and in Box ES-2, would vary necessarily from one community to another. However, as a first step, this baseline development effort has identified the following general strategies for more integrated processes.

• Use each other's planning outputs. In order to ensure a more collaborative process and to provide the basis for early consideration of the effects of alternative transportation solutions on environmental, community, and cultural resources, it is imperative that transportation agencies increase their fundamental understanding of resource planning processes. It is also crucial that resource agencies understand how they can participate in, and contribute to, the development of transportation plans and programs, and that opportunities are created for them to do so.

  Two general types of outputs from environmental resource planning are potentially useful in transportation planning and will require resources in staffing, time, and money to collect, collate and maintain. The first is the collection of outputs from the project environmental review and permitting process, which serve as the basis for permitting, determinations, and other environmental clearances. These outputs take a site-specific analysis perspective, and may not by themselves provide a complete picture of natural and cultural resource information on a landscape scale. But these outputs could be collected over a number of previous projects, and work could be done to produce similar analysis on a more landscape-scale basis, to construct a picture of the natural and cultural resource landscape that could be useful in informing integrated transportation system planning processes.

  The second is the collection of outputs produced by the planning activities of resource agencies. Such activities are less common than project review products, because of the reasons discussed above in relation to resource agency authority and responsibilities. But some resource outputs do exist and stand as potential inputs to the transportation decision-making process. Additional efforts could also be invested to strengthen the kinds of resource planning outputs that are available for inclusion in transportation planning.

  Exhibit ES-3 lists the process outputs that hold potential as additional inputs to advance transportation system planning and decision-making processes.

* Section 4(f) applies only to those water bodies that are designated for recreational use.

• Develop innovative institutional mechanisms. There is a multitude of federal, state, and local government agencies that have a stake on the outcomes of transportation plans, programs, and projects. Integrated planning requires collaboration across agencies. Strong and effective leaders that have the achievement of community goals and objectives as their number one mission must forge that collaboration.

  One example of an innovative institutional mechanism is the development of executive task forces comprised of leaders from the various interested agencies and whose mandate is to, in collaboration with implementing staff, forge a vision for an integrated decision-making process. These task forces can also be helpful in identifying agency-specific 'champions' who can then institute the organizational shifts necessary to direct resources toward integrated planning. It is imperative that the vision for integrated planning come from the top, and that those responsible for crafting goals and objectives can hold accountable those responsible for implementing strategies and tactics.

  Likewise, Inter-agency Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and Agreement (MOAs) can 'reserve a seat at the transportation planning table' by clearly defining the ways in which agencies will interact with each other throughout the planning process, and the commitments to which agencies pledge to adhere as plans are developed and projects are programmed and implemented. However, a 'seat at the table' is not effective unless resource agencies are able to expend staff resources toward that involvement. Mechanisms to share staff resources across agencies, such as transfer-funded positions, have allowed state DOTs to fund specific positions at resource agencies that then can be dedicated solely to FHWA/FTA project review responsibilities.

• Take advantage of state-of-the-art technology. A range of tools, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing, can be used to replace manual collection and integration of some of traffic, environmental, and community data. These tools are capable of assembling, storing, manipulating, displaying, and sharing geographically referenced information, and allow for integration of some transportation, social, economic, and environmental data as a means to take an integrated perspective in developing plans, programs, and projects. In order to maximize the effectiveness of such tools, we need robust data sets which, in some cases, are currently incomplete, and which are generally dispersed among disparate sources.

  Decision support systems that computerize program and project management work and guide users through review and documentation processes could help to simplify transportation and environmental planning processes and ensure that all considerations are taken into effect in an integrated manner. There are a number of states that are in the process of deploying advanced information systems to improve the transportation decision-making process. The most innovative of these are bringing together information available from resource agencies on sensitive habitats, endangered species, cultural resources, watersheds, and the like to ensure a more integrated approach to transportation planning. It is evident from such efforts that integrated transportation planning will rely on advanced information systems that are available today. Scenario planning tools such as PLACES³ and CommunityViz that have been integrated into the GIS environment could also be used as a decision support system taking in the consideration of land use and transportation scenarios.

  A key component of such systems concerns the process used to share and disseminate information. Data-sharing processes must be constructed in such a way that preserves the sensitive nature of certain data, while infusing the transportation planning process with information to be utilized in an integrated approach that is accessible and transparent to all stakeholders.

• Ensure an effective and transparent decision-making process. Aspects of decision-making include planning processes and requirements; the institutional relationships behind them; access to the information outputs from all involved agencies (transportation and resource agencies alike); and the analytical tools, performance measurement, and public involvement that support them. These aspects are important for addressing the complex and sometimes contradictory social, economic, mobility, and environmental goals expressed by communities. Added to this complexity is the number of agencies involved in the transportation decision-making process, and the diverse mandates and functions that determine their activities in response to community goals. These conditions complicate the task of developing transportation solutions that reflect the full demands of customers (i.e., high-quality transportation facilities and networks, as well as high-quality environmental stewardship), highlighting the need for an effective and transparent decision-making process. And because land use is such an integral component of the overall human and ecological system, any integrated planning effort will need to include strong linkages with local land planning processes in addition to transportation and resource linkages in order to ensure an effective, comprehensive planning and decision-making process. In order to ensure an effective and transparent decision-making process, public involvement is critical. FHWA's Transportation Planning Capacity Building program has introduced a new "Planning Assistant Tool," which is a self-diagnostic tool to help form ideas, identify techniques, and organize notes for public involvement activities.

  The outcomes of effective decision-making processes are project decisions that optimize across multiple objectives, including social equity, economic development, fiscal responsibility, mobility, safety, accessibility, environmental quality, and community quality of life, and make use of all appropriate modal, land use, or technology options to provide timely and workable transportation solutions. Ensuring that 1) there are multiple points of coordination amongst the multitude of agencies that affect the process, 2) commitments made early—at the planning stages—are sustained throughout the process into project design, development, implementation, and operation, and 3) planning results can support strong, specific, realistic, well-connected purpose and need statements and impact assessments, is critical to achieving a seamless overall process.

Federal Leadership Activities

The federal government can play a key role in ensuring that such practice becomes the norm rather than remaining the exception. By mobilizing the federal government's resources and influence, federal agencies can 1) ensure that the spirit of current laws and regulations governing transportation planning, which inherently support integrated approaches, is carried over into practice, 2) motivate collaboration and coordination amongst relevant federal agencies, 3) organize and mobilize resources to develop advanced information systems, 4) develop and deliver capacity-building programs that draw on the experiences and data of state and local transportation and environmental resource agencies, 5) fund pilot projects on innovative decision-making processes that push the envelop and that can serve as applied laboratories, and 6) promote implementation of insightful analysis and performance measures.

Based on the work that has been undertaken as part of this baseline development effort, a number of actionable recommendations for consideration by the Interagency Task Force have been formulated. They are as follow.

• Provide executive-level direction on inter-agency collaboration. Current institutional arrangements and cultures must evolve for integrated planning to permeate transportation planning practice. Executive-level leadership can have a cascading effect on organizations, and is a powerful mechanism for the Interagency Task Force to promote integrated planning. Grounded on current legal and regulatory frameworks and the experiences of state and local agencies that have pursued different approaches to decision-making, it is recommended that the Task Force design executive-level collaboration strategies and develop and disseminate guidance on institutional coordination that 'field' practitioners (federal, state, and local) can use to develop more effective institutional approaches.

• Develop technical guidance and complementary capacity-building programs on integrated planning. The process mapping exercise and interviews that were conducted as part of this baselining effort indicate that agencies need to increase their fundamental understanding of each others' planning processes and associated outputs. Methods are needed for assuring that the outputs of environmental resource plans are used to inform transportation planning. Furthermore, a range of strategies are available for achieving the objectives and outcomes that should characterize integrated planning. It is recommended that the Interagency Task Force develop such methods and strategies, including improved analysis tools and system performance measures, and prepare and disseminate guidance on their application. This should build on work related to the application of technology, such as GIS and remote sensing. Additional options include more regularly providing available regional resource planning outputs to local and state governments as input to their transportation and local land use planning efforts.

• Develop policy guidance that clarifies how current laws and regulations encourage integrated transportation planning. It is clear that the current laws and regulations that govern transportation planning recognize the need and set the basis for integrated planning. Yet, a succinct, targeted statement that clarifies and demonstrates how current laws and regulations support integrated transportation planning is not available to guide practitioners. It is recommended that such guidance be developed for both surface transportation and aviation systems planning to ensure that visionary and proactive leaders at the state and local levels have the basis that is necessary to forge cultural change, and to help practitioners better understand how to move toward an integrated approach.

1. Background and Introduction

On September 18, 2002, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order (EO) 13274, Environmental Stewardship and Transportation Infrastructure Project Reviews. This EO established an Interagency Task Force to advance current DOT and interagency environmental stewardship and streamlining efforts, to coordinate expedited decision-making related to transportation projects across federal agencies, and to bring high-level officials to the table to address priority projects. The interagency Task Force identified three areas where federal coordination and decision-making can improve the transportation project development process: 1) project purpose and need, 2) indirect and cumulative impacts, and 3) integrated planning. The Task Force established an interagency Work Group for each of these areas to focus efforts on overcoming challenges to coordination and to develop process improvements.

Recognizing that the overarching goal of the EO is to promote environmental stewardship in the nation's transportation system and expedite environmental reviews of high-priority transportation infrastructure projects, the efforts of the Work Groups are designed to accomplish the following:

• First, the products developed by the Work Groups should provide clear and actionable recommendations that the Task Force can use to forge improvements to the transportation decision-making process. More specifically, the Task Force will seek direction from the Work Groups on the necessary improvements to the development of purpose and need statements, the analysis of indirect and cumulative impacts, and the development of integrated plans. That direction must be compiled and presented in a way that enhances the ability of the Task Force to effect change–for example, through the formulation of new policy or more collaborative decision-making.

• Second, the products developed by the Work Groups should enhance the project development process that is undertaken by practitioners. Specifically, approaches for improving statements on purpose and need, analyses of indirect and cumulative impacts, and development of integrated plans must be communicated to practitioners in a way that enhances their ability to develop better transportation projects in a more timely and cost-effective fashion. Consequently, the focus on innovative practices, training programs, guidance materials, and other types of information dissemination techniques is prevalent in each Work Groups' work plan.

In forming the Integrated Planning Work Group (IP WG), the Task Force recognized the continuing need to more effectively "link" short and long-range transportation planning and corridor level planning studies performed by state and local governments with resource and land use agency planning processes, and with project-specific environmental reviews, approvals, and permitting processes. To guide its efforts, the IP WG developed a work plan outlining its priorities. The work plan prioritized the IP WG's activities into four groups:

• Priority 1 – Establish Baseline

• Priority 2 – Assess Resource Levels

• Priority 3 – Review Tiered Documents

• Priority 4 – Implementation

This report presents the results of activities on Priority 1–Establish Baseline, which has involved the execution of the following tasks.

1. A description of relevant planning processes. The objectives of this task were to define, at a macro scale, the planning processes that affect transportation project development and delivery, and to assess where opportunities for linkages between transportation, land use, and natural and cultural resources planning exist. In addition to highway, transit, and airport planning, those planning processes identified as the highest priorities by the WG, and evaluated as part of this report, are:[2]

   • Air Quality Planning,
   • Cultural Resources/Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) Planning,[3]
   • Endangered Species/Fish/Plant/Wildlife Management,
   • Land Use/Land Management Planning, and
   • Watershed Planning.

2. A description of current laws and regulations. The objectives of this task were to review current laws and regulations that influence planning processes and project decisions, and to identify legal or regulatory barriers (if any) that inhibit an integrated approach to transportation planning.[4]

3. The development of a compendium of innovative practices. The objective of this task was to highlight efforts to develop a more integrated, systems-oriented approach to transportation decision-making, and to demonstrate how integrated approaches are being designed and implemented in the field by practitioners.

Drawing on the results of literature reviews, practitioner interviews, and associated analyses conducted to meet the objectives of the tasks outlined above, this report presents a conceptual framework for integrating transportation system planning; identifies opportunities for better linking resource and land planning processes with transportation systems planning; describes the challenges that inhibit an integrated approach, as well as approaches for resolving challenges and capitalizing on existing opportunities, identified by the workgroup; provides examples of innovative initiatives and practices that states and localities have implemented to forge integration; and discusses the types of federal action that can motivate the development and implementation of integrated transportation planning and project development processes.

Exhibit 1 summarizes the structure and content of the remaining chapters of this report.

2. Integrated Planning: Needs, Concepts, and Goals

There is significant and growing concern on the part of both the private and public sectors about the future performance of our nation's transportation system. Consider the following.

• Between 1980 and 2001, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) grew from 1.43 to 2.78 trillion miles, an increase of 82 percent. During that same time frame, the physical supply of roadways, as captured by roadway lane-miles, increased by less than 4 percent. Consequently, peak-period highway congestion for passenger and commercial vehicles doubled from 1982 through 2000.[5] By 2020, passenger VMT is expected to grow by nearly 20 percent, while the demand for trucking, as measured by ton-miles, is expected to grow by over 60 percent.[6]

• Over that same period, air-passenger miles more than doubled, and by 2014 air passenger enplanements may see increases of 50 percent. Growth at these rates will severely test the future efficiency of air traffic operations in an aviation system already characterized by frequent delays and heightened security measures. This growth will also strain the surface transportation system connected with airports.

• From 1996 to 2001, public transportation ridership increased by 22 percent, and the 9.5 billion passenger trips made on transit systems across the nation in 2001 were the most in 40 years. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, in today's dollars, $20.6 billion is needed annually to maintain and improve performance of the nation's transit systems.[7]

• Since 1980, Class I railroads consolidated from 22 carriers to 7, the number of locomotives decreased by 29.7 percent, the number of freight cars decreased by 23 percent, and the amount of rail line also has contracted substantially (from 164,822 miles to only 142,633–a decrease of 13.5 percent).[8] All of this has occurred at a time when rail freight demand (as measured by ton-miles) increased by 63 percent.

• Driven by globalization,[9] our nation's ports and channels are becoming increasingly congested as ever greater amounts of freight are moved through a system with limited means for physical capacity expansion. From 1990 to 2000, tonnage at U.S. ports increased by 13.8 percent,[10] while capacity expanded only marginally. In fact, considerable resources were required merely to maintain physical capacity through efforts such as dredging.

As traffic congestion continues to increase under the pressure of growing travel demand, the future performance of our transportation networks, in terms of safety, efficiency, and reliability, has become a pressing concern. In some cases—highways, for example—travel demand management[11], improved operations, ITS, and other innovative approaches may be able to reduce the demand for new capacity in specific locations. But those measures may not be able to meet all of the capacity demands of businesses and the traveling public. There will continue to be places where few options exist to accommodate growing personal travel and freight movement beyond additions to the highway system, either as new roads or expanded capacity on existing roads. Likewise, measures to improve the effective carrying capacity of our transit systems, airports, railways, and ports can help, but may not be sufficient to accommodate expected increases in demand.[12] Without careful consideration to the performance of our system in matching transportation demand and carrying capacity, congestion resulting from growth in transportation demand may erode economic productivity and quality of life across many of our communities.

At the same time, additional use and new facilities can negatively affect natural and cultural resources. Such effects may include destruction of wetlands, degradation of wildlife habitat, increases in air pollutant emissions, conversion of parklands and open space, or loss of historic properties. These impacts can also ultimately affect the quality of life in our communities. As a result, quality of life and resource preservation have become high-priority goals in many communities. The effects of transportation on natural and cultural resources therefore necessitate that careful consideration be given to improvements to the transportation system.

As depicted in Exhibit 2, users of the nation's transportation system—the customers of transportation agencies at all levels—are demanding improvements in mobility and accessibility, and at the same time a healthy environment and livable communities. These demands often are regarded as conflicting because of concerns about the potential adverse effects of transportation investments on our natural and human resources. Consequently, the challenge to transportation agencies across all levels of government, federal, state, and local, can be articulated as follows.

How can government ensure that the efficiency and reliability of the transportation system are optimized while concurrently adhering to the environmental goals and objectives of our society? More specifically, given the goals of environmental laws and regulations and the sometimes strong undercurrent of opposition to new infrastructure investments, how can transportation agencies provide the additional capacity that customers demand in a timely and equitable fashion and meet society's environmental goals and objectives?

2.1 Current Approaches and New Challenges

Section 1309 of TEA-21, Environmental Streamlining, directed the U.S. Department of Transportation to address concerns related to delays, unnecessary duplication of effort, and added costs associated with current environmental analyses and approval processes for surface transportation. Section 304 of Vision 100 addresses environmental streamlining for aviation projects. Inherent in these directives was the hypothesis that current project development processes experience project delivery delays and unexpected high project costs that can be attributed, to an extent, to the process effects of environmental planning requirements. While this may be the case, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are more fundamental problems with the transportation decision-making process than just the effects of environmental laws and regulations. For example, a recent American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials(AASHTO) study[13] noted that 92 percent of environmental documents processed by State DOTs are Categorical Exclusions (CEs), while 7 percent are Environmental Assessments (EAs), and only 2 percent are full Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). In addition, an FHWA survey of 89 projects requiring Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for which 5 or more years has passed without a Record of Decision (ROD) found that the most common reason that projects were delayed was because of lack of funding or low priority (32 percent), local controversy (16 percent), or the inherent complexity of the project (13 percent). These findings suggest that beyond the environmental review process, there are a range of activities in planning, programming, and project development, which could also help to expedite needed projects.

In its simplest form, as shown in Exhibit 3, the current transportation decision-making processes involve planning, programming, and project planning and development. The project planning and development process involves steps including preliminary planning, development of alternatives, preliminary design and environmental review, final design and permitting, construction, and operations. The organizational format is logical, yet it can lead to suboptimal outcomes if viewed as a sequence in time and if communication is not maintained through the processes both internally and externally.

Specifically, there often is a major disconnect between surface transportation system planning and the project planning and development process. Within project planning and development, the current decision-making paradigm has grown out of the regulatory and analytical processes of the 1960s and 1970s, which segments economic, environmental, and transportation systems.[14] Although the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) sets a framework for comprehensive consideration of potential effects on sensitive social and environmental resources using an interdisciplinary approach, in practice environmental analysis and mitigation proposals are divided into categories—air, water, species and habitat, noise, community impacts—based on applicable laws and regulations. This focus on project level impacts and mitigation can be detrimental to looking regionally at the resources as systems that interconnect with each other and with the transportation system, and leads to mitigation which meets minimum regulatory requirements but focuses on micro-scale impacts and does little to enhance resource systems.

While values such as economic development, sustainability, and stewardship are generally identified by transportation agencies as goals and desired outcomes of the transportation decision-making process, they are not attained fully when a comprehensive and integrated analysis and decision-making framework is not deployed. These considerations need to be addressed early so that transportation decisions are made in a manner that considers the range of factors important to communities.

Given the importance of our transportation system to the economic well being of our nation and communities, it is critically important to create holistic decision making processes that are supported by the public. While the existing processes may have served us well during the development of works such as the Interstate Highway System, the challenges that we face currently and will face in the future require new approaches. To forge new approaches, the following fundamental challenges must be addressed.

• First, the planning process should more effectively account for transportation's interactions with the other systems that constitute our rural and metropolitan areas, including urban, economic, ecological, and other infrastructure systems. This will help us to better understand the role of transportation in meeting the goals and objectives that regions set for their social and physical development and to improve eventual outcomes. We should strive to plan and develop projects that meet the goals and objectives in forward-looking plans developed during the transportation system planning process.

• Second, the planning and programming processes should result in projects that best meet the mobility, accessibility, regional development, and environmental protection desires of communities. Simply stated, the decision-making process should provide solutions that are more responsive to the environmental, economic, and social goals of regions, that are delivered in a timelier manner, and that are more cost-effective.

To do this, we should encourage linkages between transportation system planning and transportation programming, project planning and development, land use planning, and environmental review and analysis. At first glance, these observations may come across as lofty, unattainable goals. However, as is discussed in Chapter 4 of this report, change is already underway; advances toward a more integrated approach to transportation decision-making are being made today by numerous state DOTs, MPOs, and local transportation agencies.

2.2 What is Integrated Planning?

Integrated transportation planning is about a collaborative, well-coordinated decision-making process that solves the mobility and accessibility needs of communities in a manner that optimizes across multiple community goals—from economic development and community livability to environmental protection and equity. It is about providing users of transportation systems with choices, and about providing information on the performance of transportation networks and facilities that reflects what customers value most (e.g., travel time reliability, environmental and community livability outcomes, and cost, among others). As depicted in Exhibit 4, integrated transportation planning is about a new way of doing business.

In essence, an integrated planning framework is characterized by the following elements (although in practice, there may be limitations on the applicability of integration concepts (see Box 3)):[15]

• Integration with land use planning and across transportation modes and capacity enhancement options. The transportation planning process can look more extensively at transportation options from a "transportation-as-a-system" perspective. Looking at transportation as a system requires a more careful and robust assessment of the various options available to planners and decision-makers for addressing accessibility, safety, and mobility needs. To do that, transportation professionals need a process like scenario planning that integrates transportation and land use and that guides consideration of alternative solutions, from operations to land use measures. Such broad alternatives should be considered individually and as 'solutions packages'[16]. With regard to aviation planning specifically, a "transportation-as-a-system" perspective is important in so far as it relates to airport access and connectivity with surface access modes. Airport master planning does not require airport sponsors to consider alternatives to airport expansions not within their jurisdiction (although alternatives not under airport sponsor jurisdiction must be addressed under NEPA). Performance measures need to be constructed and used to develop integrated solutions (e.g., solutions that integrate improved facility operations and advanced technology into the delivery of new physical capacity).

• Integration of the transportation system with other human and natural systems. As part of the planning process, the manner in which transportation interacts with other systems, such as urban, economic, ecological, and other infrastructure, needs to be addressed in a more holistic fashion by using integrated institutional arrangements and more collaborative and better-coordinated decision-support processes. Alternative solutions packages identified in the initial steps of the planning process need to be evaluated in a systems-oriented fashion and prioritized accordingly. For instance, using new performance measures in this part of planning, strategies and projects would be screened for their environmental, social, and economic impacts in the given area or affected region. Fatal flaws would be identified, and only those projects that meet agreed-upon evaluation criteria, prioritized in part based on environmental criteria, would move forward.[17]

  Box 4: Integration For Small Planning Processes

  The level of effort required for the planning integration activities described in this report is within the range for activities that are already undertaken for complex transportation projects and plans. However, there should also be recognition that this level of effort may not be appropriate for smaller planning processes that have smaller impacts and are already strained by resource constraints. For instance, there are thousands of small airports nationwide that retain very few staff and undertake plans and projects that do not have major off-site impacts. For these airports, extensive integration and public participation activities may not yield commensurate benefits. And in surface transportation, a similar consideration applies to mid-sized and smaller MPOs, as well as rural areas. These considerations concerning smaller planning processes should be front and center as recommendations are made for advancing the state of planning practice. The level of effort to integrate planning should be scaled to the complexity and proposed impacts of the planned projects.

• Integration of transportation planning with transportation programming and project development. The elements described above need to take place under an integrated institutional construct[18] that allows for early, inclusive, and iterative collaboration across stakeholder groups. For example, appropriate mechanisms, such as leadership task forces or memoranda of understanding, need to be developed to promote cross-agency coordination (especially with local governments and MPOs) that enables stakeholders to work together to create plans and programs that optimize our ability to meet our social, environmental, and economic objectives—although with respect to aviation it should be noted that these mechanisms make sense only for complex, major airport planning projects (see Box 4). By creating plans that meet the prescribed social, environmental, and economic tests—as defined through integrated institutional processes—project delivery can be accelerated and the quality of projects can be improved. For example, NEPA processes at the project planning and development stage can then focus on the specific consequences of a particular surface transportation project that has already met 'environmental feasibility' criteria, given the environmental capacity constraints of the region. (Again, in aviation, except for tests of reasonableness and feasibility, cost, social, and environmental criteria are not applied to plans, rather only to alternatives during the environmental process.) Mitigation options can be focused, and opportunities for enhancing the natural and human environments can be identified. Integrated transportation system planning processes and project planning and development processes would help to ensure that the best possible projects are implemented in a timely manner, projects that best optimize across social, environmental, and economic goals.

• Performance monitoring and evaluation. Involving resource agencies during the earliest stages of transportation planning is necessary but not sufficient. The implementation of integrated planning requires a significant cultural shift on the part of transportation and resource agencies. What currently can be contentious and adversarial interactions that focus narrowly on project-level effects can evolve to collaborative processes grounded on common goals and objectives and agreed-upon analytical approaches set at the earliest stages of decision-making. This evolution will require monitoring and accountability to ensure that commitments, made early in the decision-making process by transportation and resource agencies, are carried over into the projects that are implemented. Integrated planning requires effective and transparent monitoring of implemented solutions and by extension the development of relevant measures to project and then track the performance of transportation strategies, facilities, corridors, and networks. Monitoring also extends to any measures that transportation projects undertake to compensate for environmental effects.

A desired outcome of integrated planning is development of transportation projects that support, or at a minimum do not hinder, multiple community goals and objectives – transportation, social, and environmental. Expedited review of transportation projects will be another outcome, since integration would ensure a clearer understanding of the purpose of and need for projects and of the impacts of planned solutions before the project development phase. Projects with the potential for environmental effects of concern would be identified early and could be modified to meet the agreed upon evaluation criteria, and prioritized, at least in part based on environmental criteria. Integration also would ensure the development of environmental documents that are based on broader interagency agreements, resulting in a more efficient and expedited process.

Exhibit 5, on the next page, provides examples of the objectives and outcomes that characterize the core elements of an integrated transportation planning framework.

2.3 Primary Challenges to Integrated Planning

The surface transportation planning process is a detailed, Congressionally mandated procedure for developing long-range transportation plans and shorter-range transportation improvement programs. Federal regulatory requirements for transportation planning are codified in 23 CFR 450, with Metropolitan Transportation Planning addressed in Subpart C and Statewide Transportation Planning addressed in Subpart B.

The Transportation Equity Act for the 21^st Century (TEA-21) identified seven specific planning factors that must be considered in the transportation planning process at both the metropolitan and statewide level (see Box 5, above). Although the TEA-21 legislation does not define these factors in detail, Planning Factors #1, #4, #5, and #7 explicitly set the basis for integrated transportation planning. Moreover, through the MPO certification process, the U.S. DOT considers whether these factors have been adequately assessed. Every three years, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) are required to jointly review and certify that Transportation Management Areas (metropolitan areas with populations greater than 200,000) are planning in accordance with TEA-21 and the Metropolitan Planning Regulations. The certification process is open to comment from other government agencies as well as from individuals and stakeholder organizations.

Protection of the environment is reinforced in the FHWA and FTA regulations clarifying the factors to be considered in the transportation planning process. Planning factors listed at 23 CFR 450.316(a) (13) indicate that MPOs must explicitly consider and analyze as appropriate, the "overall social, economic, energy and environmental effects of transportation decisions (including effects and impacts of the plan on the human, natural and man-made environment such as housing, employment and community development, consultation with appropriate resource and permit agencies to ensure early and continued coordination with environmental resource protection and management plans, and appropriate emphasis on transportation-related air quality problems in support of 23 U.S.C. 109(h)...").

In addition, regulations at 23 CFR 771.101 and 105 implement the policies established under 23 U.S.C. 109(h), by stating that "alternative courses of action be evaluated and decisions be made in the best overall public interest based upon a balanced consideration of the need for safe and efficient transportation; of the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the proposed transportation improvement; and of national, State, and local environmental protection goals." Improving consideration of these factors in metropolitan planning has the potential to enhance integrated planning, optimize environmental outcomes, and reduce conflicts and delays at the project level.

Aviation system planning is performed at several levels of government. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) maintains a five-year plan for the national aviation system. This plan, called the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS), outlines the role of the public-use airports that are considered important components of the national air transportation system. Metropolitan, state, and multi-state aviation system planning fit between FAA's national planning efforts and the more comprehensive master plans prepared for individual airports. Although federal law does not require aviation system planning, FAA encourages it by offering technical advice and financial support.[19]

FAA guidance for system planning encourages integrated planning. The guidance suggests that participants in the system planning process should include metropolitan and regional planning organizations, environmental agencies, and other transportation agencies. The guidance strongly favors intermodal planning and recommends an early dialogue between aviation interests and surface transportation agencies to ensure that surface transportation improvements are coordinated with airport expansion plans. FAA guidance advises aviation planners be active participants in development of statewide and metropolitan transportation plans and in transportation improvement programs. To coordinate aviation system planning with local and regional land-use plans, FAA recommends including community land-use planners in a technical group during the system planning study.[20]

An environmental document is not normally required for multi-state, state, or metropolitan area system plans. In most cases, the airport system plan will not inventory environmental features to the degree necessary to make decisions on viable planning alternatives or to scope an environmental document. However, FAA advises that a system plan should consider obvious and known environmental features, such as the presence of significant residential development, parklands, wildlife preserves or known historic resources. Based on this preliminary environmental inventory, planners should be able to identify environmental factors that would be important in defining viable airport roles and reasonable development alternatives.

Consequently, it is clear that the spirit of the laws and regulations that govern surface and transportation and aviation systems planning, programming, and project development are consistent with the objectives and desired outcomes of integrated planning frameworks. Yet, although current laws and regulations do not present barriers to integrated planning, and actually support the development of an integrated decision-making process, a number of important challenges still surface. For example, and in addition to the issues associated with transportation systems planning discussed above, there are a number of other challenges that must be overcome.

• Agencies are unaware of the planning outputs of other agencies. While substantial interaction between agencies occurs during transportation project planning and development reviews, agencies generally are unfamiliar with the advance planning work that supports these project implementation and review activities. In the case of resource planning, such planning work currently does not produce comprehensive landscape-scale sets of useable resource information. Moreover, what information does exist generally has not been shared with transportation agencies. Similarly, transportation system planning outputs sometimes lack enough project information for resource agencies to make preliminary determinations of the potential effects of the projects being evaluated. Partially for this reason, and partially because of staffing and cultural constraints, transportation plans generally are not developed in association with the resource agencies that will eventually become responsible for reviewing proposed projects emerging from those plans. This relegates any potential points of conflict among agencies to the project planning and development stage, where dispute resolution is costlier and more difficult, and solutions are likely to be less effective for environmental protection.

• Mechanisms and legal frameworks to engage resource agencies early in transportation systems planning are generally lacking. With some exceptions, as in Washington, Florida, and some localities, resource agencies typically are not engaged before transportation projects enter the NEPA process associated with the project planning and development stage. Resource agencies often do not understand the transportation planning process or the relationship between state and local transportation planning agencies and the Federal Highway Administration. State and local planning bodies and transportation agencies rarely invite resource agencies into the planning process and resource agencies do not know how to effectively engage in the planning process when they are invited. No requirements or guidance have been given regarding how these agencies are to be involved in transportation systems planning activities other than in transportation conformity. As a result, agencies are unsure how to interact with each other and with the state and local agencies in the transportation system planning stage or transportation programming stage. Furthermore, few mechanisms exist to support such interaction even when it is initiated. For both transportation and resource agencies, this uncertainty translates into risk, raising fears of derailed planning processes and ineffectual use of staff resources. Without guidance or strong and inspiring leadership, agencies are unlikely to move away from the traditional project planning and development review model of interaction.

• Agencies are constrained by available resources. All agencies are constrained by available resources, but resource agencies are particularly affected by staffing constraints, as their workloads are not solely dictated internally, but also by the work and schedules of external agencies. Resource agencies are compelled to strike a balance between fulfilling procedural responsibilities associated with project planning and development reviews and conducting broader planning activities to support integration and conservation. Because project delays so readily translate to cost increases, and because transportation projects are often high-profile public investments, political pressure to expedite project delivery looms large over resource agency activities and places high demands on staff resources. This pressure acts as a major deterrent to shifts of such resources to focus on integrated planning at the transportation systems planning stage if such shifts result in corresponding movements away from project planning and development review functions.

• Resource agency structures and cultures do not actively support involvement in integrated planning processes. Each agency views and administers laws relative to its mission. Different procedural requirements, different languages rooted in technical and bureaucratic functions, and differences in scales or scopes of operation represent some of the logistical differences that need to be reconciled among agencies. Sustained participation in integrated planning and project development processes may necessitate consolidation of expertise and re-arrangements of staff resources.

  Resource agency cultures are also not currently supportive of staff involvement in transportation systems planning activities. For instance, agencies tend to focus on how much environmental impact can be avoided during project reviews, but that focus does not account for plans, strategies, or transportation projects that avoid impacts in the first place, creating an incentive to target staff resources at the project level, especially in light of limited available staffing and statutory requirements for project reviews. Even if this incentive is not explicitly institutionalized, it does serve as an impediment to more extensive resource agency involvement in transportation planning.

  Furthermore, a trust perception issue exists between resource and transportation agencies. Resource agencies perceive expenditure of staff resources on planning processes as major risks. Resource agencies are hesitant to trust that input given during a transportation system planning process will be utilized, and that involvement in such processes will eventually yield transportation projects that are better from an environmental resource perspective than if the agency were not involved at all.

• Societal state of knowledge of ecosystem function and relationships is limited. Scientific understanding of ecological characteristics and relationships, such as structure, function and change, are limited. This understanding is necessary to adequately identify and address impacts to individual resources and the ecological processes necessary to sustain them.

  Even if agencies shared the same mission and values and operated under joint procedures using similar spatial and temporal scales, there is a limited understanding of how ecosystems function, the role each component plays and how these roles change as the quality and quantity of these components vary across the landscape. While physical properties are easy to quantify with greater precision, biological components (or living organisms) adapt and populations increase and decrease which causes a ripple of effects in foreseeable and unforeseeable changes in the environment that complicate the analysis critical to environmental reviews. Despite this fact, there is a growing body of research to aid in understanding the impacts of transportation projects on biological species and ecosystems.

• Local land use is sensitive to fiscal, economic, and political constraints. The success of transportation and resource planning processes hinge on land use decisions. The reverse is also true. However, in metropolitan areas, land planning is a local function, with decision processes driven by city and county concerns. Here, several constraints work to hinder local land planning processes from holistically incorporating transportation and environmental concerns on a regional basis. First, the tax structures that finance local governments often create fiscal reliance on additional land development (especially for high-revenue businesses) and competition among localities for tax dollars. Second, while economic vitality, environmental protection and conservation, and the public health are goals of planning processes, the interactions between local economies, land development, and transportation infrastructure remain difficult to quantify, acting as a constraint to exploring alternative land use and transportation strategies.[21] And lastly, localities are particularly sensitive to preserving home rule, possibly leading them to equate any federal involvement in land planning processes as attempts to usurp local control. Efforts to evolve local land planning to better support an integrated approach will require effective partnerships with local governments and sensitivity to their areas of authority in land use planning.

3. Resolving Challenges: Capitalizing On Existing Opportunities

The strategies for accomplishing the desired objectives and outcomes presented in Exhibit 5, and for overcoming challenges such as those discussed above, would vary necessarily from one community to another. However, as a first step, this baseline development effort has identified general strategies for more integrated processes. It should also be noted that development and implementation of the strategies identified in this Chapter must be grounded on relevant and accurate performance measures and strong connections with local land use planning. Progress in these two fundamental areas is critical to taking an integrated approach. The general strategies identified are as follow:

1. Use each other's planning outputs. As discussed in Chapter 2, there is a general lack of knowledge on the part of both transportation and resource agencies about the processes, methods, and outputs that comprise transportation, resource, and land use planning. Transportation agencies generally are not aware of how specific resource planning processes unfold, the types of methods that are used by resource agencies, and the outputs that are generated. Likewise, with a partial exception at EPA, resource agencies generally are not sufficiently knowledgeable of transportation planning processes and the regulations that govern them to engage most effectively.

   In order to ensure a more collaborative process and to provide the basis for early consideration of the effects of alternative transportation solutions on environmental, community, and cultural resources, it is imperative that transportation agencies increase their fundamental understanding of resource planning processes. It is also crucial that resource agencies understand how they can participate in, and contribute to, the development of transportation plans and programs, and that opportunities are created for them to do so. The commitment of both transportation and resource agency leaders to an integrated planning framework is critical to gaining the cross communication and understanding needed to further the work of developing integrated plans.

2. Develop innovative institutional mechanisms. There is a multitude of federal, state, and local government agencies that have a stake in the outcomes of transportation plans, programs, and projects. Integrated planning requires collaboration across agencies. Strong and effective leaders that have the achievement of community goals and objectives as their number one mission must forge that collaboration.

   One example of an innovative institutional mechanism is the development of executive task forces comprised of leaders from the various interested agencies and whose mandate is to, in collaboration with implementing staff, forge a vision for an integrated decision-making process. It is imperative that the vision for integrated planning come from the top, and that those responsible for crafting goals and objectives can hold accountable those responsible for implementing strategies.

3. Box 6: Research Efforts on Remote Sensing and GIS Transportation Applications

   The DOT-NASA Joint Program on Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Technologies is at the forefront of research on developing and applying advanced technologies. In April 2002, it published a report, "Achievements of the DOT-NASA Joint Program on Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Technologies: Application to Multimodal Transportation" which summarizes an array of available data collection technologies for which transportation applications have been identified. The Transportation Research Board (TRB) and FHWA's Travel Model Improvement Program (TMIP) have also examined the potential for remote sensing and GIS for transportation applications, and serve as a basis for further research. In 2000, TRB held a conference on Remote Sensing for Transportation. TMIP issued a report, "GIS in Transportation, Transportation Case Studies," which examined the use of GIS by the various MPOs and state DOTs.

   Take advantage of state-of-the-art technology. A range of tools, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing, can be used to replace manual collection and integration of some of traffic, environmental, and community data. These tools are capable of assembling, storing, manipulating, displaying, and sharing geographically referenced information and allow for integration of some transportation, social, economic, and environmental data as a means to take an integrated perspective in developing plans, programs, and projects.

   Decision support systems that computerize program and project management work and guide users through review and documentation processes could help to simplify the environmental process and ensure that all considerations are taken into effect. There are a number of states that are in the process of deploying advanced information systems to improve the transportation decision-making process. The most innovative of these are bringing together information available from resource agencies on sensitive habitats, endangered species, cultural resources, watersheds, and the like to ensure a more integrated approach to transportation planning. It is evident from such efforts that integrated transportation planning will rely on advanced information systems that are available today (see Box 6).

4. Ensure an effective and transparent decision-making process. Aspects of decision-making include planning processes and requirements; the institutional relationships behind them; access to the information outputs from all involved agencies (transportation and resource agencies alike); and the analytical tools, performance measurement, and public involvement that support them. These aspects are important for addressing the complex and sometimes contradictory social, economic, mobility, and environmental goals expressed by communities. Added to this complexity is the number of agencies involved in the transportation decision-making process, and the diverse mandates and functions that determine their activities in response to community goals. These conditions complicate the task of developing transportation solutions that reflect the full demands of customers (i.e., high-quality transportation facilities and networks, as well as high-quality environmental stewardship), highlighting the need for an effective and transparent decision-making process. And because land use is such an integral component of the overall human and ecological system, any integrated planning effort will need to include strong linkages with local land planning processes in addition to transportation and resource linkages in order to ensure an effective, comprehensive planning and decision-making process.

   The outcomes of effective decision-making processes are project decisions that make use of all appropriate modal, land use, or technology options to provide timely and workable transportation solutions, which optimize across multiple objectives including social equity, economic development, fiscal responsibility, mobility, safety, accessibility, environmental quality, and community quality of life. Ensuring that 1) there are multiple points of coordination amongst the multitude of agencies that affect the process, 2) commitments made early—at the planning stages—are sustained throughout the process into project design, development, implementation, and operation, and 3) planning results can support strong, specific, realistic, well-connected purpose and need statements and impact assessments, is critical to achieving a seamless overall process.

This Chapter discusses the strategies listed above. To set the background for the strategies, it first offers observations on the processes and needed progressions for transportation and resource planning, drawing on the literature review and analyses, targeted interviews with transportation and resource agency staff across the nation, and process mapping exercises that were conducted as part of Integrated Planning Work Group's baseline development activities.

3.1 Brief Overview of Transportation and Resource Planning

A significant portion of the baselining effort was dedicated to understanding the planning processes used by transportation and resource agencies. Core process mapping activities were carried out for the three modes of transportation, as well as the five planning disciplines identified in Chapter 1 that are the subject of this report. Those maps enumerate the high-level, conceptual steps that are taken for core planning activities. Within core processes there exist sub-processes for many of the high-level steps, and each planning process produces outputs that could serve as the basis for a more integrated decision-making approach. Exhibit 6 depicts the process mapping levels.

The process mapping exercise was conducted to better understand existing integration opportunities. It uncovered some notable insights. First, the level of detail varies significantly among planning processes; in some cases, procedures are unspecified to the extent that attempting to map the process in detail might be construed as making new guidance. Second, there are points along these planning processes that represent important integration opportunities. However, the effort found that more specific insights about the precise points of coordination within processes and the exact nature of these integration opportunities would require refining the core process maps and conducting an in-depth mapping exercise beyond the scope of the IP WG's baselining task. But such an exercise could yield valuable information about the potential for integration; a recommendation of this report, therefore, is to conduct such an exercise to refine the core process maps, as well as to develop in-depth sub-process maps in coordination with future federal integration activities. The work produced by the baselining activities can be made available as a starting point.

In addition, the mapping exercise identified key outputs from specific resource planning activities that can be integrated into transportation planning. Prior to discussing those outputs, the following sub-sections briefly describe the transportation and resource planning processes.

3.1.1 Transportation Planning

Highways and Transit

Surface transportation planning (highways and transit) takes place at the state, regional, and local levels. The scope and nature of the process differs based on the area being covered and requirements set out in laws and regulations.

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are required to develop transportation plans for urbanized areas with a population greater than 50,000. The main responsibility of the MPO is to serve as a regional agency coordinating transportation planning and programming among state and local jurisdictions and agencies. The process is designed to foster involvement by all interested parties, such as the business community, environmental organizations, community groups, and the general public. This is meant to be accomplished through a public participation process conducted by the MPO in coordination with the State DOT and transit operators. The planning process is designed to include a number of activities:

• Developing consensus on a regional vision and goals;

• Forecasting future conditions, including population, employment, and land uses in the region;

• Identifying major growth corridors and analyzing, through detailed planning studies, various transportation needs;

• Developing alternative infrastructure and operating strategies for improving the system;

• Estimating the impact of the transportation system on air quality within the region;

• Examining decisions in the context of environmental justice, land use plans, economic development, and other goals;

• Developing a financial plan that covers operating costs, maintenance of the system, system preservation costs, and new capital investments; and

• Developing a public involvement plan that engages the communities and public throughout the transportation decision-making process.

Several planning documents are prepared by the MPO:

• The Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) looks broadly at transportation in the region and sets goals for the future, and is required to plan for a period of at least 20 years. The LRTP is supposed to be updated every three to five years (depending on whether the region is in non-attainment for air quality standards). The Plan makes estimates of future infrastructure needs and identifies the investments that should be made, given available funding.

• The Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) is a financially constrained short-term program covering the most immediate implementation priorities for transportation projects and strategies from the LRTP. The TIP must cover a minimum three-year period of investment and be updated at least every two years to reflect the current funding situation. While federal regulations require the TIP to include all projects receiving any federal funds, some regions include all projects in the TIP, even those being funded only with state and local funds. In areas subject to transportation conformity, regionally significant projects[22] must be included, regardless of funding source.

• Some MPOs also conduct corridor and sub-area studies, which take a corridor-wide perspective in developing a package of specific projects, and which can be conducted under an approach that utilizes tiered environmental documents. The tiered environmental approach was designated as IP WG's Priority 3, and will be investigated in activities related to that priority.

• The Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) specifies tasks to be performed by the MPO staff or member agencies. The UPWP format varies significantly from region to region. Typical elements include a list of planning tasks and studies that will be conducted over a one- to two-year period, an implementation schedule, an identification of which agencies are responsible for each task or study, and identification of funding sources.

Together, these documents lay out the major highway and transit investments and programs that will be implemented within a region by state DOTs, transit agencies, and local agencies.

Airports

Airport planning in the U.S. is performed at several levels.

1. At the federal level, the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) is a published five-year plan that is developed by FAA. The NPIAS lists the public use airports and their developments considered to be in the national interest and eligible for financial assistance under the Airport and Airway Improvement Ac of 1982.

2. Statewide airport system planning identifies the general location and characteristics of new and existing airports and the general expansion needs of existing airports to meet statewide goals. State transportation or aviation planning agencies develop these plans with input from regional and local entities.

3. Regional metropolitan airport systems plans identify airport needs for large metropolitan areas, and are prepared by regional/metropolitan area planning agencies. Needs are stated in general terms and incorporated into statewide system plans. MPOs develop these plans with input from local entities (i.e. airport sponsors).

4. The operators of individual airports prepare airport master plans that specify the needs of specific airports. The purpose of an airport master plan is to set out a plan for future development designed to meet projected needs given community, environmental, and political considerations.[23] It is at this level of airport planning that NEPA requirements arise and the need for integrated planning frameworks is most pressing.

An airport master plan is a detailed, long-term development plan for an individual airport. It is prepared to support the creation of a new airport or the modernization or expansion of an existing airport. Typically, operators of individual airports prepare airport master plans and participants in the planning process include airport management, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials, state aviation organizations (such state DOTs), representatives of the aviation industry, the public, and consultants.[24] The goal of an airport master plan is to outline airport development that will satisfy future aviation demand in a financially feasible manner, while also addressing the environmental and socioeconomic concerns of the community.[25]

An airport's master plan should reflect the role envisioned for the airport in a state or regional airport system plan and linkage to the surface transportation system, and in some areas there is area wide planning for airports. These plans are in turn reflected in FAA's NPIAS. Inclusion of airports in the NPIAS establishes eligibility for federal financial assistance under the Airport Improvement Program (AIP).

The major steps in the development of an airport master plan are as steps follows.

• Organization and Pre-Planning. For more complex planning efforts, the airport operator may establish formal policy, technical, and review committees, as well as a schedule for public meetings and information sessions. The airport operator determines the proper scope of the planning effort by reviewing the issues facing the airport and making a preliminary assessment of what it will take to resolve each of these issues. FAA recommends that this step include an attempt to identify the required environmental documentation for the development that is likely to be recommended.

• Inventory and Forecasts. Development of an inventory involves collecting data on existing conditions and issues facing the airport. In addition to the inventory, the planners also produce forecasts of the different elements of aviation demand and compare that demand over time with the capacity of the airport's facilities. This comparison will indicate the time when new or expanded airport facilities may be needed.

• Requirements Analysis and Concepts Development. Given the inventory of current infrastructure and forecasts of future demand, the planners determine whether the airport can accommodate the forecasted demand. Preliminary environmental and financial assessments are conducted to identify any possible constraints that would limit the airport's future expansion. If the assessment of the airport's capacity shows a demand for substantial expansion, the planners investigate alternative methods of meeting the demand, including the alternatives of doing nothing or transferring traffic to another airport.

• Further Steps for Expansion of an Existing Airport. If planners determine that demand can be accommodated at the existing airport, they synthesize landside and airside concepts and revise the Airport Layout Plan (ALP) and landside plans for the terminal areas and surface access routes. FAA reviews the planned developments in the ALP with respect to safety, efficiency, utility, and environmental impact. FAA approval of an airport's ALP is a precondition for federal financial assistance for further work on the planned development. Unconditional approval of an ALP is contingent upon first having a satisfactory NEPA determination (i.e. CAT EX, FONSI, EIS/ROD).

Needed Progressions in Transportation Planning

Transportation planning as a practice has been making some strides to produce the outcomes discussed in Chapter 2, but still falls short on delivering such outcomes to the fullest potential. Some current planning needs stand out as ones that could be met with greater integration, as well as ones that must be resolved before integrated planning can be embraced.

• Transportation planning processes are struggling to achieve a "transportation-as-a-system" perspective. A holistic approach to improving the transportation system has yet to take hold in common transportation planning practice. First, transportation agencies struggle to bridge disconnects even within the process for transportation planning, programming, and project development. Attaining consistency among these activities would make strides toward robust transportation decision-making processes that could then serve as a basis for linkages with environmental and community goals. Second, there continues to be a need to integrate across transportation modes (see Box 7, above). While travel needs of people can be fulfilled via multiple modes, transportation planning and project financing have historically favored single-occupancy vehicle travel over other modes, such as transit, bicycling, or walking. Alternative means of meeting the broad range of transportation needs should also be examined at the systems level. Likewise, a systems perspective in freight transportation is hampered by significant differences between the roles of the private sector in the provision of needed capital investments. For example, freight rail investments are the responsibility of the private sector, whereas government largely is responsible for the provision of needed highway facilities. Decision-making processes that are best suited to incorporate a holistic set of community and business concerns are those that are able to utilize all available alternative strategies. Third, transportation can also fundamentally utilize non-infrastructure means to address capacity needs. A more proactive approach to operations can improve travel time reliability and provide greater mobility without infrastructure capacity increases. In the case of surface transportation, a demand management approach also can address societal needs through means other than infrastructure improvements. Although progress is being made, thissystem perspective is hampered by current institutional and political conditions. There are also places within the planning processes themselves that could more actively support a system perspective.

• Institutional and political conditions are difficult to navigate. Transportation planning, construction, and operations functions have been compartmentalized into disparate local and state agencies, making it difficult for multiple decision-makers to form plans, programs, and projects that are optimal for the system as a whole. Political considerations can also work against a system perspective, sometimes driving the process toward large new infrastructure investments in order to bring the economic benefits of federal investment to local communities. And lastly, the processes for financing the transportation system are exceedingly complex, including multiple local, state, and federal fund sources, each of which retains a set of eligibility restrictions for the kinds of transportation improvements that can receive funding. Progress is being made in building in more flexibility into federal funding mechanisms, but the focus is still on new infrastructure.

• Public participation processes are not well-developed. Visioning components that incorporate extensive public input are not yet commonplace in transportation planning practices. While some agencies have experimented with new technologies that help to capture public input, further progress is still needed. FHWA's Planning Assistant tool and Scenario Planning concept are techniques to consider a wide range of issues in developing a long range plan.

• Performance measures are not consistently applied. A similar evolution is occurring to increase the consistency with which system-wide performance measures are applied. While federal requirements exist for transportation planning procedures, they do not stipulate any specific standards to which the systems created by such plans are required to perform, nor require that any standards be employed. Some performance measures are currently employed for managing specific transportation facilities, but consistent application of measures for transportation system performance is not yet commonplace.

• Modeling and other analysis tools continue to warrant refinements. Vast improvements have been made since the advent of computer modeling, but continual and further advancements are needed to help communities and agencies better understand the interactions between land use, transportation demand, transportation capacity, and environmental systems.

• Transportation planning processes are struggling to more proactively optimize across environmental, social, and economic objectives. This challenge is caused in part by a major disconnect with land use planning. Growth pressures inextricably link transportation with land use, but planning for each occurs separately from the other. Local land use decisions have vast implications for environmental, social, and economic objectives. Transportation decisions that incorporate future land use as an input, rather than as a concurrent parameter, are more difficult to optimize across these objectives. There is a need for an improved integration mechanism between land use plans and other planning decisions. Federal agencies can assist in creating integration and feedback loops through education, provision of tools, facilitation and improved communication. That way, local governments making land use decisions are aware of the full array of options available to analyze various scenarios and are better informed of the consequences of their land use decisions on the natural and built environment.

The timing of environmental considerations within transportation decision-making processes also contributes to this challenge. Transportation agencies usually interact with resource agencies at the project development stage, at which point substantial environmental analysis and expertise is brought to the evaluation of transportation projects. But, by that point the range of transportation options has been narrowed down, and significant amounts of technical work and consensus-building have been invested into projects, making transportation agencies reticent to dialogue about potential major changes[26]. The laws enacted to foster coordination between transportation and resource agencies have focused on inter-agency interactions only when projects are ready for implementation, giving resource agencies authority for consultations and permits on projects, rather than plans. As a result, transportation planning processes are often conducted without the benefit of comprehensive natural and cultural resource information.

3.1.2 Environmental Resource Planning

Because of the close interactions between human and environmental systems, resource planning has generally targeted changes in planned human activities to produce better environmental outcomes. Resource planning has taken shape against this backdrop, featuring authorizing statutes and mechanisms that enable resource agencies to give input to the processes used to prepare projects for implementation, including transportation projects, with the aim of avoiding, minimizing, or mitigating their impacts on environmental resources. Some advance resource planning has been conducted to determine baseline information such as maximum acceptable levels of pollution, the biological aspects of the most important fish and wildlife resources to conserve, or which properties constitute important cultural resources.

Most of this work has been focused on preparing resource agencies to most effectively give input about natural and cultural resources at the project implementation stage. In rare cases, the federal government has actively participated in conservation activit