PEL and Corridor Planning: State of the Practice Review of Planning and Environment Linkages Implementation in Corridor Planning

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) commissioned a review of transportation corridor plans to determine the extent to which these plans have utilized FHWA's Planning and Environment Linkages (PEL) approach, as described in the FHWA Guidance on Using Corridor and Subarea Planning to Inform National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The PEL program seeks to help transportation decision-makers to consider environmental factors early in the planning process and to use that information to inform the environmental review process. Each corridor plan in the review was evaluated based on a set of PEL elements organized into four categories: Planning, Collaboration, NEPA, and Data and Documentation. The review found that the most common elements in corridor plans included: transportation problem statement, study purpose and need, corridor definition, and transportation modes. Across the 87 plans evaluated in this review, incorporation of environmental information varies from plan to plan and from State to State. However, the review found that several States have taken steps to explicitly incorporate PEL elements and mention PEL and the NEPA process in corridor plans.