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Why do we look at Social and Community Effects?
Transportation projects often have effects on the communities they travel through. During the environmental documentation phase of transportation project development, we need to look at the effects on the social elements of the area. We look at things such as the demographics of the area, the cohesion of neighborhoods including walkability and ease of bicycling and using transit. Noise effects and effects on recreation among other related areas are looked at as well.
This page and the others listed on the left sidebar should help you to do a better job of analyzing those effects.
What are the Applicable Statutes and Regulations?
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) states in part that: “The purposes of this Act are: To declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man;” and the NEPA also requires the consideration of alternatives; including the "no-build" alternative; consideration of social, environmental, and economic impacts; public involvement; and use of a systematic interdisciplinary approach at each decision-making stage of Federal-aid project development.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the main federal non-discrimination law. WSDOT complies with Title VI and other federal laws whether an individual project has a federal nexus or not. Following are the main statutes, regulations and guidance that apply to the social effects of transportation projects.
Further laws, regulations and policies can be found in the Annotated Bibliography for Community Impacts and Environmental Justice. (pdf 56 kb)
Environmental justice refers to disproportionate effects on low-income or minority populations. More information on environmental justice can be found on our environmental justice web page.
Where else does WSDOT consider community and social effects?
We consider community and social effects in all the areas of project development including construction and maintenance. We have a Livable Communities policy that guides our work in this area. Some helpful references are our Washington State Transportation Plan (WTP), Building Projects that Build Communities, and Understanding Flexibility in Transportation Design. Our Highways and Local Programs Division has many other references that provide information in this area.
Title VI forms
For distribution at public meetings: Title VI form in English (pdf 31kb), in Spanish (pdf 41kb), in Korean (pdf 70kb), in Russian (pdf 76kb), in Tagalog (pdf 34kb), in Vietnamese (pdf 83kb), in Traditional Chinese (pdf 174kb) and in Simplified Chinese (pdf 156kb). If you have problems with inaccuracies in any of these, please contact us. Every effort has been made to correctly translate them but occasionally, depending on the font loaded on computers, they may not display correctly.
Do you have more questions or need assistance? Review the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page. You will find three categories of FAQs here. The first section gives more background, followed by a section for project teams and then a section for the analyst. For analysts performing a social analysis, the social FAQs and the EJ resource page, which includes resources for EJ and social analysis, provide additional assistance. Another good resource is the FHWA/FLDOT website on community impact assessment.
If these resources do not answer your questions, please contact us.
We have tried to order these related webpages to optimize searching, but realize with this large amount of information that it may be difficult to find information. Please contact Kathleen McKinney at 360.705.7304 for assistance.