The headlines couldn’t be clearer: Americans are swarming to Texas. According to a SmartAsset study, nearly 55,000 households and over 100,000 individuals moved to the state. Behind those inland pilgrims are blue-chip companies like Elon Musk’s Tesla. Apple will follow suit, and build its second largest campus in Austin. Hewlett Packard, a Silicon Valley behemoth, announced their Texas move in 2020. Texas is growing in a Texas-like fashion: a lot.
The more a state experiences anthropogenic sprawl, the more that state will have to accommodate for the increased level of motorists. Failure to do so results in more dire consequences than mere congested traffic routes and increased travel times. Unmanageable traffic volume can cause slow emergency response times, and safety issues can arise from intersections that fail to accomodate a high number of motorists. Indeed, high traffic volume has a positive and even linear relationship with crashes according to the National Institute of Health. It’s vital that transportation departments keep up with their district’s transportation demands as Americans flock to Texas.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has geared up to meet this challenge. The department’s draft 2025 United Transportation Program proposes just over $104 billion dollars of transportation spending. The funds will be used to see out TxDOT transportation and highway improvement projects across the state in hopes to better move people and goods. TxDOT has emphasized that safety is also a top priority in this endeavor as well; one person a day has been lost on Texas roads since November 2000.
Building the infrastructure is only one part of the challenge to safely transport a high volume of motorists. Assessing how new highways may, or may not, impact communities is another pivotal step in realizing victory for any transportation project. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to consider how a major project might impact the human and natural environment. Alongside this, federal agencies must remain compliant with several Executive Orders and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. EO 12898, issued by President Clinton in 1994, directs federal agencies to identify and address “disproportionately high” and “adverse” effects of human health and the environment from their actions on minority and low-income populations. Under EO 12898 this must be performed to the “greatest extent practicable”. Title VI demands that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”. This includes the processes involved with highway construction, and any other project that touches federal dollars.
EO 12898 is concerned with environmental justice (EJ) populations: minority and low-income populations. Populations of Limited English Proficiency (LEP) are also of concern for Title VI compliance. EJ and LEP populations are potentially vulnerable to environmental impacts of new highway construction that requires the acquisition of new right-of-way, which can displace facilities. For example, low-income populations may not be able to suffer the loss of community facilities funded by tax-dollars which are more affordable or even no-cost to use. LEP populations may not be able to voice their concerns over a federal project due to language barriers regardless of their socioeconomic status. Hence, federal agencies will provide translators at public meetings about the proposed project. And while disabled Americans are not traditionally classified as an EJ population, they too must be considered when federal projects are proposing right-of-way acquisition. Disabled Americans may rely on certain facilities that are in their vicinity, and the removal or degradation of access to those facilities can significantly hinder the well-being of that population. Even the walking paths of children traversing to school must also be considered for a fully orbed conceptualization on how a proposed project may impact a community. Due to the monumental growth Texas is experiencing, addressing the need for more infrastructure whilst preserving a community’s way of life, and preventing disproportionate harm to vulnerable populations, will be a noteworthy task.
It can be easy to think that corridor projects or other large, federal construction projects are by their nature adversive to LEP and EJ populations. But this is not always the case. For example, the construction of relief routes can provide alternate pathways for motorists around city nexuses, potentially reducing the amount of air pollutants within an urbanized area. Research suggests that EJ populations have been historically vulnerable to the adverse effects of air pollutants, likely due to their often close proximity to urbanized areas. Other road and bridge projects could provide easier access routes to public transportation which EJ and LEP populations depend heavily on for work and school commute. The improvement of highway infrastructure may include the installation of pedestrian bridges, increased sidewalk paving, and more shared use paths. All of these are improvements that benefit EJ populations that do not own vehicles. Environmental scientists use tools like NEPAssit and EJScreen, Geographic Information System (GIS) applications created by the Environmental Protection Agency to better assist in determining EJ status of populations.
The future is bright for Texas infrastructure. The coming years will present ample opportunity to gauge where the state is in regards to its NEPA compliance and ability to carry out the process smoothly, all the while preserving, and in many cases increasing, the well-being of the state’s widespread EJ and LEP populations through infrastructure improvement.
Charles Jacobi is an environmental scientist for VRX, Inc., a civil engineering and transportation consulting firm in Plano, Texas. He holds dual graduate degrees in Natural Resources Management and Biological Sciences.
