Community Connectors Portal: Tools for advocates
Transportation for America’s Community Connectors portal provides tools and information for advocates to decode the complex and confusing maze of programs, acronyms, and decision points that determine what gets built with federal and state transportation dollars.
You may be fighting against a freeway expansion. You may be trying to advance a Reconnecting Communities project to remove an old highway. You might be just trying to make wide, dangerous arterial roads a little safer for people to cross. This Community Connectors portal explains common terms, decodes the processes, clarifies the important actors, and inspires with helpful real-world stories.
Browse through the four core areas below, or view ALL Community Connectors portal content here at once
Who is involved? Who, and how to influence them.
Which agencies and individuals control the hundreds of billions in federal and state transportation dollars for transportation projects? How can you influence them?
Learn moreHow it happens. Demystifying the process.
How does transportation money get spent? Where does the money come from? What things can federal transportation money be spent on?
Learn moreWhat they really mean. Decoding common terms.
Transportation engineers, planners, and decision makers often bury advocates in a sea of jargon and acronyms, accompanied by an explicit message that you can’t possibly understand things well enough to suggest a different path.
Learn moreWhere it’s happening. Advocate stories.
“Community Connectors” all across the country are fighting divisive, destructive, and unaffordable freeway expansions, advancing projects to remove old highways, making wide, dangerous arterial roads a little safer for people to cross, or just improving basic infrastructure people depend on each day. These battles are won and lost—often on the same project. Read a growing list of profiles our team is producing about these stories.
Learn more