Award Categories
- Encouraging Nonmotorized Transportation - This category includes activities that promote greater use of bicycling, walking (including access for persons with disabilities), and other nonmotorized modes of travel. Some example activities are:
- Active living programs (i.e. encouraging more physical activity as part of trip choices)
- Promoting accessibility for persons with disabilities
- Encouraging greater use of bicycling and walking for all ages or for target groups
- Enhancing the Environment for Human Activities - This category includes infrastructure changes that benefit human transportation to increase livability and quality of life. Some example activities are:
- Changes in land use and transportation integration that promote nonmotorized trips (including those trips which are part of multimodal trip making)
- Providing noteworthy facilities for bicycling and walking and integrating these facilities into highway and transit project development and design
- Incorporating historic preservation activities (Section 106 Programmatic agreement successes with resolution of adverse effects) into project development and design
- Beautification efforts that encourage human activities
- Smart growth/sustainability initiatives
- Transportation and land use integration
- Safety and security improvements
- Noise reduction
- Creating or enhancing opportunities for recreational activities
- Light pollution reduction (while still considering safety and security needs)
- Process Improvements - This category includes changes in a process or procedure that allow for more efficiency of service delivery. Some example activities would be:
- Acquisition and relocation innovations
- Community oriented practices that yield tangible results through partnering and collaboration
- Innovative approaches to context sensitive solutions
- Collaborative decision making efforts which result in project solutions that gain public acceptance
- Environmental Justice (e.g. recognizing and/or addressing EJ/Title VI issues in transportation documents and decision-making)
- Scenario planning
- Noteworthy community impact assessment techniques
- Lessening the adverse impacts of property acquisition (e.g. innovative practices that still meet Federal regulations)
- Initiatives to provide Decent, Safe, and Sanitary housing in communities with limited resources
- Improving relocation services for homeowners and businesses by going beyond normal circumstances to accommodate unusual situations
- Last resort housing requiring creative exploration and implementation
- Marketing
- Public participation and community outreach that encourages communities to take ownership and pride in their communities
- Educational and Training Programs - This category includes efforts to inform individuals about issues or changes that should be made to improve the human environment.
- Enhanced outreach to low income and minority communities, low-literacy and limited English proficiency populations, as well as the results of those activities in terms of Environmental Justice mitigation
- Education and outreach - e.g. environmental education that focuses on connecting kids with nature, or education about the interaction between the human environment and the natural environment
- Cultural awareness or cultural understanding
- Tourism promotion (including heritage tourism)
- Product Development - This category includes modeling and technology related activities that resulted in the creation or improvement of a tangible product or technology that improves everyday processes.
- Creative use of GIS and other information technology initiatives
- Visualization tools for communicating information
- Visual imagery
- Incident management systems
- Travel Model Improvement Process (TMIP)
- Modeling (land-use, people movement, etc.)
- Others - This category includes those activities that do not fit in categories 1-5.
- Border planning
- Freight planning
- Economic development
