Ensuring automobile tailpipe emissions meet regulatory standards is an important mechanism for implementing the Clean Air Act Amendments. Research has documented the inequitable distribution of air pollution and its negative impacts, but little is known about how the costs of reducing vehicle emissions are distributed. Spurred by the closure of the sites for mandatory vehicle emissions testing within the city of Chicago, this study examines how implementation details—specifically emissions testing siting—could have unintended negative environmental consequences and how the burdens of traveling to emissions testing sites are distributed by race and income. A conservative estimate projects 1.9 million additional miles traveled from Chicago to suburban emissions testing sites during a two-year testing cycle, following the closures of Chicago’s testing sites. Both before and after the closings, higher shares of poor and Black residents, who are protected by federal environmental justice rules, show statistically significant correlations with increased travel time to a testing facility. However, the prior time and distance advantage associated with higher shares of White, non-Latino residents is no longer statistically significant due to worsened access to facilities. From a historic perspective, this does not represent an environmental justice improvement, as rather than improving historically worse access for protected population groups, public facilities became less accessible. The study demonstrates the need for emissions testing programs to conduct environmental justice analyses of travel to testing sites and suggests to researchers the importance of retrospective environmental justice analysis to consider the continued legacy of past inequities.
The Costs of Compliance: An Environmental Justice Analysis of Automobile Emissions Testing Siting in Metropolitan Chicago
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board ; 2672 , 3 ; 185-193
2018-08-08
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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