Barriers to Community Connectivity: An Assessment of Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program

Historically, transportation planning emphasized rapid, often more expensive modes like driving, frequently sidelining community preservation and connectivity. Such trends predominantly affected mixed-use urban locales, advancing vehicle-centric designs over the accessibility, quality of life, and economic interests of residents. However, a recent pivot toward transportation equity, as evidenced by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), is notable. The BIL champions, the Reconnecting Communities Program (RCP), an initiative committed to repairing historically induced community separations and promoting accessible, cohesive, and flourishing neighborhoods. This research evaluates the concept of transportation burdening facilities as defined in various studies and synthesizes the existing literature on the methods for assessing barrier effects. Employing data analytics, the study scrutinizes the 2022 RCP awarded applications to discern common patterns in the outcomes of transportation infrastructure that either segregate or impose burdens on communities. This analysis aims to categorize these patterns, which could highlight community severance by pinpointing and addressing divisions caused by previous transportation decisions. Our findings aim to empower decision-makers with actionable knowledge to understand, address, and potentially eliminate such community disjunctions, fostering more integrated and holistic urban planning.