Environmental Justice and racial issues an increasing area of concern fortransit agencies, public advocates, and planners. Most transit investments in rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) are completed using Federal funds under the Federal Transit AdministrationÆs (FTA) New Starts Program. To date, there has been very little scholarly study of this program, especiallyin terms of environmental justice. While the FTA New Starts application process considers low-income households and employment areas served by a proposed system, it has no consideration for race. However, there is a common perception that rail programs in particular provide investment in suburban White areas of cities. This analysis proposes a buffer analysis method using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to evaluate four randomly selected FTA New Starts projects receiving full funding grant agreements in 2007 on the basis of race. This analysis uses Census 2000 data and focuses on home-based racial demographics. The conclusions of this study find no consistent pattern of New Starts projects exhibiting a bias of serving areas that are primarily White. In fact, many of the projects served proportionally strong minority areas. The results vary depending on the buffer from the transit stations (walking, biking or driving distance),and they also varied depending on which race in particular was served. This analysis serves as an example of how buffer analysis can be used to evaluate many environmental justice elements in the FTA New Starts and offers the FTA should consider including such racial categories in its application process for Federal Dollars.
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