T4America Blog

Join us for the release of Planning for a Healthier Future

Thanks to 2012’s MAP-21 legislation, all metro areas and states will soon be using a limited array of performance measures. While the in-progress federal requirements will cover a limited range of measures, T4America is releasing a new resource next week to help metro areas find ways to use performance measures to improve public health, address social equity concerns, and advance environmental quality.

Join us next week on Wednesday, June 22 at 4:00 p.m. EDT for a special online discussion about the new report, including firsthand experience from some of the metro regions that participated in a related two-year collaborative — more about that below. Sign up and be the first to get a copy of the Planning for a Healthier Future report in your inbox next Wednesday.

While the federal performance measures currently being developed will cover limited metrics like safety, condition of roads and bridges, or how to measure congestion, this report lays out additional measures that enable MPOs and regions to understand the health impacts of transportation and land use decisions within three other dimensions: physical activity, traffic safety, and exposure to air pollution.

This report is the result of our two-year Planning for a Healthier Future collaborative with teams from the regions of Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, San Diego, CA and Nashville, TN. These four regions are actively working to improve health, increase access to opportunity for vulnerable populations, protect the environment and promote economic competitiveness by developing and implementing transportation performance measures for their respective metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs)

Performance measures and health?

Cities and regions around the country face important choices about how and where they want to grow, how to connect people to economic prosperity and how to use limited resources to promote healthy communities and provide a great quality of life for all of their residents.

Performance-based planning allows stakeholders and decision-makers to understand how a given investment, policy, or decision “performs” across certain measures over time — providing more clarity and transparency on exactly what state or regional transportation dollars are accomplishing. As a result of the transportation projects that get built, is the air cleaner? Do more people have access to opportunity? Is environmental quality made better or worse? Are the impacts on people’s health — especially vulnerable populations — positive or negative?

This detailed report summarizes current best practices in the development of health, equity and environmental measures that can be used to evaluate the performance of transportation investments at a regional scale. It aims to explore and test a variety of different data-driven measures that can evaluate packages of transportation investments — such as those frequently bundled together by MPOs in transportation plans.

Join us next week to learn more and get your copy!